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LIBRARY

OF CALIFORNIA
DAVIS

•

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

THE RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE
At Hawarden in 1897

MANY CELEBRITIES

AND A FEW OTHERS

A BUNDLE OF REMINISCENCES

WILLIAM H. RIDEING

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

1012

THE COUNTRY LLFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

CONTENTS

I. A Boy's Ambitions 3

II. First Lessons in Journalism 28

III. Midnight Oil and Beach Combing 43

IV. A Handy Man of Literature 68

V. A Corner of Bohemia 91

VI. The Lure of the Play Ill

VII. Thomas Bailey Aldrich 131

VIII. Edgar Fawcett 141

IX. Mark Twain and E. C. Stedman 153

X. Some Boston Memories 173

XI. Henry M. Stanley and Paul du Chaillu .... 193

XII. A Royal Academician and His Friends .... 200

XIII. Glimpses of London Society 211

XIV. Charles Reade and Mrs. Oliphant 225

XV. James Payn 236

XVI. Wilkie Collins, Sir Walter Besant and "Ian Maclaren" 246

XVII. Field Marshal Lord Wolseley 255

XVIII. Two Famous War Correspondents 268

XIX. Lady St. Helier and Thomas Hardy 280

XX. "Toby, M. P." and His Circle 289

XXI. The Author of "LornaDoone" 306

XXII. My Acquaintance with Mr. Gladstone .... 316

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone et Hawarden in 1897

Frontispiece

FACING PAGE

Samuel Bowles, the Elder 34

Hon. Whitelaw Reid 40

Horace Greeley 58

Richard Watson Gilder 72

Kelp Rock, Newcastle, N. H 154

Oliver Wendell Holmes 178

Henry M. Stanley 194

Paul du Chaillu 198

James Payn 238

Lord Wolseley at Fir Grove House, Farnham, Surrey,

in 1888 256

Thomas Hardy 282

Sir Henry W. Lucy 290

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree 294

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as " Hamlet " 298

Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree as " Falstaff " , 304

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

MANY CELEBRITIES
AND A FEW OTHERS

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

A A beginning, let me recall the famous old
seaport in which he was born.
Whole neighbourhoods of that town were in
habited by sea-faring people and the commonest talk
was about ships. The granite basins of the docks, the
finest in the world, were full of them in shapes that
steam was only beginning to displace: clippers and other
full-rigged craft, barques and barkentines, brigs and
brigantines, trafficking with the ends of the earth, all
smelling of tea, coffee, palm oil, sugar, spice, hides,
cocoanuts, cotton, spruce or pine. They came in on/
an eighteen-foot tide and departed on the flood with
their crews singing chanties as they trotted round
the old-fashioned, handle-barred capstan. The steam
windlass was in the future, and the captain, and the
men too, would have looked upon the auxiliary engine
with as much disdain as upon kid gloves and scented
handkerchiefs. Gales were always blowing and when
the moon was out it appeared to be whirling like a sil
vered cannon ball through the amber and dove-coloured
clouds. All the smoke and soot of the chimneys could
not expunge the salt in the air; it filled the nostrils and
could be tasted on the lips; it was spread by the river,

[3]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

which, except for an hour or less at the turn of the tide,
raced up and down as turbulently as the rapids below
a cataract, making it necessary for the boats crossing
it to steer a mile or so above their landings at the ebb
and as far below their landings at the flood. There was
exhilaration in it all, and the mad river reacted on the
people, not making them as impetuous and restless
as itself, but hardening them and strengthening
them. They were not quick and high-keyed, but
deliberate and plodding with extraordinary fortitude
and pertinacity.

Now and then things happened which passed beyond
the moment's wonder into history. We saw the Alabama
sail from Birkenhead, some of us winking and some
protesting, the latter a minority. Raphael Semmes,
lean, sallow and nervous, much less like a mariner
than a sea-lawyer, became the idol of an hour, and after
ward the Shenandoah arrived fresh from her post-
bellum depredations in Behring's Sea, her captain
declaring to everybody's amusement that he did not know
the war was over. I remember Punch's little joke with
him, a cartoon depicting him landing and ingenuously
asking, "Is Queen Anne dead?" The Great Eastern
came, looming as big in comparison with the trans-
Atlantic steamers of those days as a ship five times the
size of the Mauretania would look now. She was beached
and I walked under her keel, an atom in her shadow.
The Cunarders and Inman liners, small as they were,
entered port and left it with far more fuss than is mjade
now over vessels of twelve times their tonnage. Cannon
saluted them from the Rock Fort. An expedition to
the Arctic or the Antarctic could not evoke more awe
than did their departure on those staggering voyages

[4]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

to Boston and New York, which took them from twelve
to twenty days. One night the town shook as in an
earthquake. Windows crashed and every light went out.
The Lottie Sleigh, anchored in the Sloyne, had exploded
her cargo of gunpowder. The famous landing stage
burned down! Thousands of Americans embark and
disembark at that colossal floating pontoon, which,
nearly all of iron and swung to the shore by hinged
bridges, rises and falls with the tide. People agape had
to see the ruins for themselves before they could believe
it. As rumour it was as preposterous as the time-worn
witticism of the Thames afire.

Are these events local and immaterial, and only
preserved in provincial history and the memories of
sentimental and garrulous townsmen? I think not.
The Editor of "Haydn's Dictionary of Dates" does not
ignore them any more than he ignores the Siege of Troy,
the Rape of the Sabines, Hannibal and Caesar, the
Armada or Trafalgar and Waterloo.

We were so concerned in it that the Civil War in
America might have been at our doors and the Mersey
running red from the carnage. Hard times smote us
and passion surged high. The unemployed thronged
the streets groaning and muttering at the corners.
Usually they were overawed and sullen, but oftener
than once they could stand no more and broke the
bounds, and all the shops were closed and barred
and shuttered. At my school we were a divided camp,
the South far outnumbering the North. Under the
banners of the unequal stars we fought desperately and
resigned ourselves like Spartan children to the inglorious
penalties that followed our subsequent slouch into the
domestic circle with bleeding noses and mouths and

[5]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

blackened eyes. Bull Run, Chancellorsville and Fred-
ericksburg were repeated, Vicksburg, Chattanooga and
Gettysburg were reversed. History has made no note
of it, but General Grant was a puffy, overgrown, blub
bering fellow, who cried as he ran away, while General
Lee was small, hard, and as lithe as a monkey.

Whatever happened, the high winds noisily, the low
winds with suave and insidious persuasion, reiterated
in every boy's ear the lure of the sea, and boomed a
whispered " Come to me — Come to me — Adventure —
Riches," though the boxes on the quays for small con
tributions to the missions bore the inscription, "There
is sorrow on the sea"; and nearly every Sunday, while
the wind howled as though it would bring down the
steeple, we sang the hymn, "O hear us when we call
to Thee."

Even away from the river and the docks we were
reminded of it not only by talk but by the cabs carrying
home the returned crews, all very jovial, all with jingling
money in their pockets, and, more tempting than money,
with the spoils of their voyages, big branches of uncrushed
dates, pomegranates, green cocoanuts, monkeys, parrots
and other birds with astonishing plumage and ridiculous
faces. Many of my friends shipped as apprentices, and
I nearly yielded to the call.

Retiring to an attic where there was an old trunk
with a convex lid, I one day assumed command of a
Cunarder and took her out to sea or warped her through
the narrow dock-gates and berthed her alongside the
shed. That is more trying than navigation in deep
and open water, and I had never seen it accomplished
without much vociferation and some profanity. I
stood, master of my ship, on the bridge between the

[6]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

two paddle-boxes (in those primitive days the propeller
was regarded as a precarious and untrustworthy inno
vation), huskily bawling my orders fore and aft, to which
came ready answers, "Aye, aye, sir," and "Port it is,"
or "Starboard 'tis." All was going splendidly and
without a scratch on the paint when a hawser snapped
and we crushed into the dock-gate, on the port side, tear
ing away three feet of forward sponson. If profanity
is ever pardonable it should have been forgiven then,
but my mother opened the door of the attic and gently
forced me down from the convex lid of the trunk on which
I was bellowing. I was shorn of my dignity and authority
just as a real captain falling under the displeasure of
captious owners might be, but unlike him I was also
shorn of an indispensable part of my clothing.

Our elders had little faith in moral suasion in those
days, and whippings were frequent both at home and
at school. The schoolmaster's cane could be robbed
of some of its sting, however, if you secreted a hair in
your palm before the cane swished down. Without
knowing it, we were subjects of the ameliorating miracles
of Christian Science.

While smarting and indignant, I threatened to run
away to sea, and instead of deriding or threatening me,
my mother said in a voice so level and impassive that it
exasperated more than opposition could have done,
"Why run away, dear? Let me know when you wish
to go, and I will take care to have everything needful
ready for you." She must have been a humourist. The
statement of her willingness plucked from my many-
hued romance all the feathers of its tail and wings.

I pondered the matter at tea-time when she conciliated
my insurrection by giving me the "kissing crust" with

[7]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

plenty of butter on it. Probably not one in ten thou
sand unlucky moderns has the slightest idea of what the
"kissing crust" is, and I pity them. The bread was
made at home and sent out to the public bakery, where,
if it was well-leavened, it rose high above the edges
of the pan in the oven and overflowed into pendants
like the most exquisite carvings or stalactites. These
crisped and browned not into one shade of brown, but
every shade of brown, and not only into brown but into
gold. They were like the fan tracery in the vaulting
of a cathedral, and inside them the bread was warm and
white and sweeter than in any other part of the loaf.

The kissing crust soothed me while it lasted, but I
clung to my opinion that the proper way of going to
sea was stealthily by a Romeo's ladder made of strips
of sheets and blankets, lowered in the "vast dead and
middle of the night" from a bedroom window. Early
in the morning you shipped for a voyage to San Fran
cisco, Madagascar, New Guinea, Valparaiso or the White
Sea. The bo's'ain patted you on the back and with
his quid in his cheek recognized your metal at a glance.
"The right sort, the right sort, my lad! You don't
come sneaking aboard like one of them pink-skinned,
white-livered counter-skippers. You come through the
hawsepipe, like a real sailor man, and no nonsense about
you, eh? Now then! Aloft, my hearty! Aloft!"

His pipe sounded like an eerie bird. A terrific gale
blew, as you crossed the bar, and you were ahead of all
the others in reaching the top-gallant. What a gale it
was with the boiling sea running mountains high, and
the wind like a swinging mallet pounding you till you
could neither speak nor hear! Before your watch ended
you were cold, weary and drenched to the skin, but then

[8]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

came the contrast of the warmth and light of the fo'c'sle,
and the yarn-spinning of the old sea-dogs in your
mess.

No healthy boy needs to be told that the spice of
adventure is in hardship and difficulty. What lure was
there in the picture in the boy's paper of a smug looking,
foppish chap perched in the fo'c'stle head reading a copy
of that otherwise interesting periodical, while the sails
of his ship hung loose in the breathless doldrums. That
didn't stir you a bit, but when the picture was of some
seamy and leaky old tub, notorious for mishaps, lying
dismasted and on her beam-ends off Cape Horn, with
her drowned crew sported by the icy billows like dead
fish, and bergs like Alps creeping toward her, you were
frantic to be there. It made you long for the sea far
more than did anything placid, comfortable and safe,
even a coral island fringed with palms, though it must
be admitted that when gesticulating and cannibalistic
savages were added to the surf and exotic vegetation
they were not without a charm of their own.

To the young the joy of life is in the scorn of it, and
safety is the thought of only the timorous. "The spice
of life is battle — and we wrestle a fall whether in love
or enmity." Poe comprehended the superior incentive
peril offers to imaginative and courageous boys, though
his seamanship is, as in the case of Arthur Gordon Pym,
never good enough for a certificate and occasionally
spurious. His sloop booms along under the jib only
after her mast has gone by the board! Despite that
absurdity, I can quote him in corroboration of my point.
Speaking of his friend Augustus, Pym says: "He most
strangely enlisted my feelings in behalf of the life of a
seaman when he depicted its more terrible moments

[9]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

of suffering and despair. In the bright side of the
painting I had a limited sympathy. My visions were of
shipwreck and famine; of death or captivity among
barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and
tears upon some gray and desolate rock in an ocean
unapproachable and unknown." But the best presen
tation and confirmation of it are in Joseph Conrad's
incomparable story, ' ' Youth . ' ' No other writer of English
ever interpreted the spirit of the sea and those who
follow it with his acumen, and the paradox of the boy's
inclination toward privation, mysterious as it is, has
not eluded him.

I had some idea of discovering the Northwest Passage
and discussed its possibilities with my father. I was
a very restless boy. Nothing that I saw was ever at a
standstill to my inner eye. The ships in the docks
slipped their moorings while I gazed at them and re
appeared in far off rainbow-coloured seas and harbours.
I could not pass the Nelson monument without having
the gallant figure in bronze come down and win
Trafalgar over again.

>( You think you could stand the Arctic cold and dark
ness?" my father calmly asked. I thought that I should
not object to them. What could be cosier than the
cabin of a stout little ship, with lamps lighted and books
to read, and pemmican in abundance (the very name of
pemmican made the mouth water, though I had but a
glimmer of its composition), while she, gripped in ice,
resisted pressure like a Saucy Castle under unavailing
siege.

"Well, you might try it," he said.

I stared incredulously into his unmoving face till
he added, "Suppose you go into the coal-hole, and spend

[10]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

a few hours there. That may give you some idea of
what you might expect."

He, too, must have been a humourist, but I took him
quite seriously, and after a moment's indecision immured
myself, more from an impulse of curiosity than obedience,
in that part of the cellar which spread in utter darkness
under the sidewalk. Cathay beckoned me from the
farther end. Baffin's Bay lay behind me near the closed
door. I was in my winter quarters and confident of
reaching Behring's Sea in the Spring. The darkness
was relieved and made splendid by the flashes of the
aurora in quivering rays of violet, orange, sapphire,
crimson and colours for which I could not find a name.
Sport was almost as good as that of Mr. Roosevelt in
Africa long afterward. I killed four polar bears, about
a dozen sea-lions, and three musk-oxen. I elaborated
my plans, and finding open water unexpectedly, struck
north and planted the Confederate flag on the Pole,
which to my surprise was only a moving mass of ice and
snow.

Probably I spent the whole afternoon in that dismal
cellar. It was damp as well as cold, and had a smell
of stagnant water. My teeth were chattering, my feet
and fingers numb at the end of my sojourn, and I put
off further explorations, not abandoning them but post
poning them till a later date, when they were to be
renewed in an unforeseen way.

Another adventure urged its attractions. From a
seat in the bay window I saw Captain Bebbington
jauntily mounted on his glossy bay hunter going home to
the fine house he had rented on the hill, which then
looked down over meadows to the mouth of the river,
with yellow sandhills on both sides, and the silvery-
Hi]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

gray Welsh mountains flickering in the haze beyond.
My mother shrugged her shoulders and made what I
called "a face." He had been one of my father's juniors
in the Cunard service, but he had retired from that,
and suddenly become a person of splendour.

"No better than a pirate," my mother said, but on
some matters I had my own opinions and prudently
reserved them.

A new kind of craft had appeared in the docks lately :
small, rakish, slick and slippery steamers of light draught
and graceful lines, which bore such names as Lynx,
Badger, Fox, Ferret and Greyhound, indicative of
both cunning and velocity. They were so slender,
so unequal to the Atlantic, that some of them
foundered in the first gale they encountered, even no
farther away than the bar; and yet weather played but
a small part in their destiny. Throngs gathered when
ever one of them sailed. It was "Ahead, full-speed"
from the moment she passed out of the docks, with her
slanting funnels belching skeins of curdled brown smoke,
and her paddle-wheels spinning a broad, white, spuming
wake. Men picked for daring manned her and they left
vacancies in the older services to less reckless successors.
We stood on the quay watching her with wondering eyes
till nothing remained of her but a saffron plume on the
horizon out toward Point Lynas.

Sometimes neither the ship nor her crew ever came
home. It was a precarious and exciting business. She
might make Bermuda or Nassau and load an almost
priceless cargo there for Galveston, Charleston or Wil
mington, expecting to receive cotton or other staples
of the South in return, yet after surviving the stress of the
Atlantic she might fall a prey to the blockading fleet,

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

and be either captured or sunk. If captured, those of
the men who were not killed had plenty of leisure for
repentance in prison.

Captain Bebbington and I were of the lucky who
eluded pursuit, however. He had made eight round
voyages between Nassau and Wilmington, and the
newspapers, which could be depended on then, said that
his profits had been fully one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars each trip. That is a matter of history — it is
on record of him and other blockade runners. My own
profits were quite as large as his, but I do not know what
became of them, except that with them I intended to
dress my mother in the heaviest and most brilliant fabrics
in the shop windows, especially shot silks quivering with
colours like my aurora borealis.

She wore a gown that was no novelty when I heard her
say to me, "Dreaming again! Eh, my lad, how I wish
you had more application!"

Nearly all the boys in my school had more "ap
plication" than I had. I was a trying and desultory
scholar, whose only promise lay in the exercise known
as "compositions."

Then the theatre caught me. We had an uncle who
was editor of the Chronicle, the oldest paper in the town,
a serious, dignified gentleman, who always dressed in
black like a clergyman, and who to me seemed elderly
and venerable. He may have been about thirty-five.
We did not see him often, but when we did it usually
was at the gates of Paradise with him as St. Peter. He
invited us to the play, and the deference with which
he was received by the acting manager gave me my first
glimpse of the POWER OF THE PRESS. Capitals
are indispensable in recognizing that august and

[13]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

indefeasible influence. The prices were not high, the
maximum — four shillings — for the boxes. The pit
was a shilling and the gallery sixpence. The perform
ance began at seven and did not end till eleven
or a little later. At nine o'clock you could enter at
half-price, with two hours of diversion before you,
including two of the five acts of a tragedy, and
the "comedietta" or farce, which always ended the
entertainment. Never were there more liberal and
more protracted programmes than the damp and inky
broadsides of quarto size, which announced that the
curtain would rise at seven with the "screaming"
farce of "Box and Cox," to be followed by Shake
speare's "sublime" tragedy of "Hamlet," the whole
concluding with the "roaring" farce of "No. 1, Round
the Corner." Sometimes a "ballet divertisement " was
interpolated in that stupendous triple bill, and Miss
McGinty — that was the real name which the lady bore
unashamed and without stooping to any pseudonym,
or French or Italianized translation of it — Miss Mc
Ginty danced, like a wave of the sea, the Pavlova of
the time and locality, with a supporting corps of tinselled
star-eyed sylphs, whose pink legs looked eatable and
always reminded me of strawberry ice-cream.

Of course we paid nothing, and acquired self-impor
tance from our privilege. The acting manager hovered
about us, and spoke to Uncle Dignan between the acts.
"Quite all right, Mr. Dignan? If you would like to
change your seats, a little nearer the front, or over there
by the proscenium, I shall be most happy." He was a
resplendent person* with a glittering gold watch chain
as thick as a dog's leash, and diamonds on his fingers;
as smooth and as glossy as a barber is when, cigar in

[14]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

mouth, he leaves his shop for a promenade. We swelled
with pride under his flattering attention.

The bill was changed nearly every night, and each man
in his turn played many parts. The actors were humble
and simple people, the greatest of them content with
ridiculously small salaries, who obeyed the traditions
of their business, and never varied, unless there happened
to be a daring young fellow like Henry Irving among
them, the accents and the attitudes stereotyped and
prescribed by earlier custom. In a single week we might
have "Hamlet," "Othello" and "Macbeth," alternated
by such melodramas as the "Forest of Bondy," "Rob
Roy" and "The Stranger," and at Christmas, he who
had been Polonius the night before tumbled about with
senile humour as Pantaloon, and Ophelia frisked and be
witched us in frothy and abbreviated skirts as Colum
bine. None of the theatres of New York or London can
compare in sumptuousness with the old playhouse, if
memory of the impression it made can be trusted, and
if it was dimly lighted by yellow and sputtering gas,
if it smelled of the play-bills, oranges, ginger-beer and
perspiration those things did not in the least impair
its fascination.

It was not the leading man, Mr. Cowper, who was so
popular that his annual benefit ran through a whole
week, nor the sweet little leading lady, Miss Hill, who
enthralled me. It was the superlative beauty of Miss
Bella Goodall, the soubrette, as she stood in the lime
light, and sang "Cherry Ripe," which waved me back to
Carthage. The audience liked a song anywhere in the
long bill, and never questioned the appropriateness
of such an interlude at any point in the play. One of
the characters would say to the others, "Shall we have a

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

song?" leaving argument and action in abeyance, and
the reply could only be inferred as acquiescent, for it
could not be heard through the deafening applause of
the audience. Then the orchestra would tune up and
Miss Goodall, smiling and bowing, would open the most
beautiful mouth in the world, a mouth and teeth which
justified the simile of the rose with a drift of snow in it.

It bowled me over; I dreamed of it; it led me into
temptation, and I succumbed. I must have been de
praved as well as precocious, for having once seen her
I became a guilty and clandestine thing, paying for in
tervals of heaven with long-drawn hours of fear and
shame. After going to bed I dressed again, and stole
out on tip-toes to the six-penny gallery to see Miss
Goodall night after night. I would sneak to the stage
door after the performance and watch for her and
follow her, unobserved and at a respectful distance,
till she entered her lodgings in Mount Pleasant. Even
then I waited until she blew out the candle in her
decent attic, and only then, glowing in the frost like one
who has been to a shrine, I trudged home.

I learned to smoke, for smoking is manly, and I
desired to be a man; I desired to be a man, because I
wanted to declare my passion and throw myself at Miss
Goodall's feet.

No other period of life is so restless and discontented
as adolescence, and while the freedom of manhood is
seen tantalizingly near, the shackles of bondage cramp
our feet. One boy's experience is much like another's,
and ludicrous as that infatuation may have been, I dare
say many serious old gentlemen can, if their memories
are long enough and candid enough, recall how they too
were smitten by calf-love.

[16]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

Quite recently a gray-haired vicar confessed to me a
youthful passion of his own. In his undergraduate days
he was madly in love, and meaning to propose he called
on the lady one afternoon, when she received him with
particular graciousness. He trembled, and rose from his
seat with a half-paralyzed movement toward her, but
sat down again before he could utter a word. She, of
course, divined what was coming, as women always do
in such predicaments, and without revealing her intuition
by face or voice or any sign, she sighed, "I had forgotten
that this is my birthday. How tragic it is ! I am forty
years old to-day — an old, old woman!" The vicar's
sense of disparity must have been more acute than mine,
for he resigned himself to the repulse while I, on the con
trary, could not have been silenced had Miss Goodall
confessed to fifty, for to me she was an unaging goddess
untouchable by Time's blight and afflictions.

The psychologists claim that they can tell a man
what he is fit for if they catch him young enough, but
this science was not in those days on everybody's tongue
or so familiar in newspapers and periodicals as it is now.
One followed one's family in vocations as in religion and
in politics. We had little freedom of choice, and class
and environment controlled us and disposed of us. Most
of my friends went to sea, or became apprentices, with
indentures binding them for five years, in the offices
of the owners and brokers of ships, or in the shipyards,
or in those businesses which deal in cotton, rum and
palm oil, the exports and imports of all lands and climes,
which scented the wharves and the towering, sooty,
flat-faced warehouses along the docks. As I have said,
my father was in the Cunard service, and brothers of
his and of my mother were mariners. We revered the

[17]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

memory of a great-great-uncle, Sir Edward Walpole
Browne, who had been an admiral in the Royal Navy,
and a friend of the great Sir Robert Walpole.

Perhaps no other town of its size in the world had less
in it to foster academic or literary tastes than that
bustling, wind-driven, rain-swept old seaport.

The most eminent person in literature who ever dwelt
there was an American, Hawthorne, who, serving as con
sul growled at it and gibed at it in his forlorn detachment,
finding no consolation for its commercialism and material
ism rin the vigour of its people, the rush of its tides and
the pageantry of its shipping. It was Hades to him,
despite its river and its rain.

Another American discovered a glamour in it because
it gave him his first glimpse of England and because "the
elegant historian of the Medici," Roscoe — the adjective
is Washington Irving's — was one of its townsmen.
What can we do but smile now when Roscoe is so faded
a figure, so seldom heard of, so little read — what can
we do but smile condescendingly at the child-like delight
of that gentle pilgrim, who wrote in his "Sketch Book:"
"I drew back with an involuntary feeling of veneration.
This, then, was an author of celebrity; this was one of
those men whose voices have gone forth to the ends of
the earth, with whose minds I have communed even in
the solitudes of America. Accustomed as we are in
our country to know European writers only by their
works, we cannot conceive of them, as of other men,
engrossed by trivial or sordid pursuits, and jostling with
the crowd of common minds in the dusty paths of life.
They pass before our imaginations like superior beings,
radiant with the emanations of their genius, and sur
rounded by a halo of literary glory."

[18]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

We did not see that halo on Roscoe's head, nor did he
inspire as much reverence among us as did the merchant
princes who lived in solemn state in mansions of the
red sandstone which underlies nearly all that neighbour
hood. It was the insular period. The grounds of every
house of consequence were enclosed by walls almost
as massive as those of the forts at the mouth of the river,
which also were of red sandstone. Even little houses
were girt and hidden by walls higher than their roofs.
They had nothing to fear, and the inmates were prodig
iously hospitable. Their monastic detachment was but
a visible translation of the old dictum, "An Englishman's
house is his castle." The owners of the ships and sugar
plantations, the cotton kings, the ship builders, they
in their magnificence compelled homage, and mothers
and fathers held them up to their sons for emulation,
as wisely as Miss Mitford held up a business man to
James Payn when he beat embryo wings in a fluttering
longing for a literary career. We looked on authors
as sorts of lusus naturce, queer, unaccountable, erratic
people, from whom ordinary behaviour could not be
expected. A small poetess visited us once, and put the
house in constraint, partly in awe, partly in covert de
rision. I showed her one of my "compositions," and
she stroked me and sonorously said (a compliment hardly
understood): "Who knows? Perhaps a Macaulay in
embryo, a Chalmers in bud." Beyond that I can only
remember that she was extremely plain "about the head,"
as a candid friend of mine put it not very politely, and
that I invidiously compared her with Miss Goodall
and Miss McGinty.

Authors were few and far between there. One of them
was H. J Byron, who afterward gave us "Our Boys" and

[19]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

a chain of other flimsy and facile comedies, some of them
very amusing in dialogue and characterization but tenu
ous and traditional in plot. He was not a native, but
with speculative audacity had come down from London
to take on his shoulders the management of the three
principal theatres. I can remember him in his fashion
able London clothes, drawling in speech, slow and
lugubrious in manner, immitigably cynical and habit
ually bored. People repeated the clever things he said,
as, for instance, his reply to the friend who met him and
inquired, "What's the matter, old fellow? You look
out of sorts. Liver?"

"No, my boy, not liver. Liverpool."

Aliens seem never to appreciate those charms of
the old seaport which for us the clamorous winds
cannot disperse and the driving rains cannot wash
away.

Mrs. Oliphant belonged to us, but had gone away.
W. S. Gilbert paid us an occasional visit when, long be
fore his operetta and magisterial period, he produced
one-hour burlesques with Charles Wyndham, a mere boy,
in the cast. Then Uncle Dignan had a friend who, while
plodding on the newspapers, was reaching out toward
literature — a most agreeable young man, with the kind
est eyes, a mellifluous brogue, and velvety manners,
Justin McCarthy. But we regarded none of them
seriously; never for a moment did we exalt them as Irv
ing exalted his "elegant historian." A certain novelist
offered himself as a candidate for Parliament, and it
seemed presumptuous and audacious on his part. A
grocer or a butcher would have struck us as hardly less
suitable for the honours of Westminster than a mere
literary person. Captain Bebbington, of the Blockade

[20]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

Runners, continued to be a more popular hero than any
of them.

A change was impending in my tastes and desires,
however. If once the lure of the sea entangles one it
is impossible to entirely free one's self from its meshes;
it endures till death. One may escape the complete
surrender to it that makes a lifelong sailor. Still its
entreaty persists, and we buy a yacht, or join the naval
reserve, or at least haunt the wharves in our spare time
and surprise our friends by our knowledge of the history
of ocean steamers. I did not renounce it, and it pleads
with me to this day; but another lure began in another
way to compete with it and to keep me in a silent corner
at home, when my habit had been to dream my leisure
away along the docks or on the landing stage. The sea
was heard now in a minor key, not threatening compul
sion while it pleaded, but coming to the ear like sleeping
water under the summer sun. I do not know to a cer
tainty just how or when the new ambition found its
cranny and sprouted, and I wonder that it did not
perish at once, like others of its kind which never blos
soming were torn from the bed that nourished them and
borne afar like balls of thistle down. How and why it
survived the rest, which seemed more feasible, I am not
able to answer fully or satisfactorily to myself, and other
people have yet to show any curiosity about it.

Perhaps its origin was in the vogue of Dickens. He
obsessed us. The neighbours ceased to be called by their
own names and were nicknamed after his characters.
The doctor's assistant became Bob Sawyer, and the boots
at the Derby Arms, Sam Weller. The nurse in our own
family was never spoken of except as Tilly Slowboy,
and who could the ancient mariner in the little shop,

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

where you could buy blocks, tackle, and every part in
exact and exquisite miniature of hull and rigging for
the model ships we built — who could he be but Cap'n
Cuttle?

Lady Dedlock, Oliver Twist, Joshua Bounderby, Mr.
Gradgrind, Mr. Pecksniff, Mr. Bumble, Chadband,
Quilp's boy, Mr. Snodgrass, Mark Tapley, Caleb Plum-
mer, and Mr. Pickwick himself — they all passed our
door or were met day after day, and some of them were
intimates. Mr. Micawber was protean and multiple,
a solicitor, a cotton broker, a house agent, a wine mer
chant, a derelict, whose occupation changed often, an
inconstant bird of passage caught in a tunnel with sun
shine at both ends of it and dispiriting dulness in the
middle. He used to pat my head, and call me his "little
man" in a loose, moist voice which always smelled of gin.

The humour and the pathos of Dickens liberalized us,
loosened our purse strings, conciliated our antipathies,
and, like a dew from heaven, fertilized the kindness of
our hearts. For a time I took what he gave us only
for the pleasure of it, the humour at a higher value than
the pathos, but by and by he emerged out of the quality
of one who merely entertained into prophetic and
messianic proportions. It came over me as a divine
revelation of one who was taking on his shoulders the
burden of the world, and whose purpose, aflame in his
passion for humanity, was to lash all false dealing and
hypocrisy, and to lend a hand to all who were heavy
laden and sorrowful.

Through this influence, fortified by the reading of bits
of Carlyle ("Heroes and Hero Worship" and "Past and
Present"), Kingsley's "Alton Locke" and Charles Reade,
not to speak of the other printed food, digestible and

[22]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

indigestible, in masses and morsels, the literary pro
fession made a louder call than the deep, and the once
belittled author became an object of idolatry even more
exalted and more benevolent than Roscoe was to Irving.
To all authors of sentiment I attributed in my fervour
boundless goodness of heart and a benign compassion
for all who were oppressed and in distress. Was imagina
tion again playing tricks with me? As I had followed
Miss Goodall from the stage door, so I now followed,
whenever I met him, one I knew only by sight and
reputation, whose sketches in a local paper had a Dickens
flavour. I framed him in the halo of a saint, never think
ing that, like Gilbert's poet, he may have been "heavy,
Ibeery, and bilious."

Nearly all light literature had a Dickens flavour as
long as Dickens was in his ascendency. Never had any
other writer so many imitators, nor a flavour so easily
counterfeited. The flavour clung to those who caught
it as tenaciously as the odours of tobacco, musk, pepper
mint, valerian, cling to all who touch them or come near
them. Nothing was immune from its infection; it over
powered me. Tiny Tim, Little Nell, and the rest
were unintentionally parodied; many of my scenes
were laid in snow, and my characters, with grotesque
names, were inordinately hungry and very fond of hot
punch; that is, the best of them were. The baser ones,
like Scrooge, were of frugal appetite, dyspeptic, and
solitary, and for them the flowing bowl had no sort
of attraction.

How at this period I watched for the postman! En
velopes of portentous bulk were put into my hands so
often that I became inured to disappointment, unsur
prised, and unhurt, like a patient father who has more

[23]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

faith in the abilities of his children than the stupid and
purblind world which will not employ them.

These rejected essays and tales were my children,
and the embarrassing number of them did not curb my
philoprogenitiveness.

Dawn broke unheeded and without reproach to the
novice as he sat by candle-light at his table giving
shape and utterance to dreams which did not foretell
penalties, nor allow any intimation to reach him of the
disillusionings sure to come, sharp-edged and poignant,
with the awakening day. The rocky coast of realities,
with its shoals and whirlpools, which encircles the
sphere of dreams, is never visible till the sun is high.
You are not awake till you strike it.

Up and dressed, careless of breakfast, he hears
the postman's knock. Nobody outside the family,
except the postman himself, is allowed to give that
sharp "tat-tat — tat-tat — tat-tat — tat-tat!" on the
brass Medusa's face which receives the imperious and
exigent blows from the pendant springing from her
coils. Lesser people dare no more than a single,
muffled, deprecatory, and apprehensive rap, which
the Kitchen answers tardily, reluctantly, and perhaps
superciliously.

There is Something for the boy, which at a glance
instantly dispels the clouds of his drowsiness and makes
his heart jump: an envelope not bulky, an envelope
whose contents tremble in his hand and grow dim in
his eyes, and have to be read and read again before
they can be believed. One of his stories has at last found
a place and will be printed next month ! Life may bestow
on us its highest honours, and wealth beyond the dreams
of avarice, the guerdon of a glorious lot, but it can never

[24]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

transcend or repeat the thrill and ecstacy of the trium
phant apotheosis of such a moment as that.

It was a fairy story, and though nobody could have
suspected it, the fairy queen was Miss Goodall, much
diminished in stature, of course, with all her indubitable
excellencies, her nobility of character, and her beauty
of person sublimated to an essence that only a Liliputian
vessel could hold. Her instincts were domestic, and her
domain was the hearthstone, and there she and her
attendants, miniatures of the charming damsels in
Miss McGinty's peachy and strawberry-legged corps de
ballet, rewarded virtue and trampled meanness under
their dainty, twinkling feet. Moreover, the story was
to be paid for, a condition of the greater glory, an irref
ragable proof of merit. Only as evidence of worth
was money thought of, and though much needed, it
alone was lightly regarded. The amount turned out
to be very small. The editor handed it out of his trou
sers pocket — not the golden guinea looked for, but a
few shillings. He must have detected a little disap
pointment in the drooping corners of the boy's mouth,
for without any remark from him he said — he was a
dingy and inscrutable person — "That is all we ever
pay — four shillings per colyume, " pronouncing the sec
ond syllable of that word like the second syllable of
"volume."

What did the amount matter to the boy? A paper
moist and warm from the press was in his hands, and as
he walked home through sleet and snow and wind —
the weather of the old seaport was in one of its tantrums
— he stopped time and again to look at his name, his
very own name, shining there in letters as lustrous as
the stars of heaven

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Soap bubbles and bits of coloured glass in a two
penny kaleidoscope! Forty years and more have slipped
away. The bubbles are burst, and the kaleidoscope
long ago passed to the dust heap. The cobbler is still
at his last, weary but not yet spent. Sometimes he has
tried his hand at Cinderella slippers, but they have been
too clumsy for wear, and he has surrendered fine jobs
of that kind to those who have a lighter touch than his
own.

So many of us who call ourselves authors are like him,
doing plain and honest work for ordinary use without
ever approaching perfection. The cobbler may have
the better of the comparison, for the world must have
his shoes, while it can get along very well, losing little
of wisdom and little of diversion, without the evanescent
things it takes from us in urbane toleration, only because
they are fresh from the shop, of the day's date, or baited
with the bare possibilities, which so seldom materialize,
of the new Aldrich, the new Stevenson, the new Hardy,
the new Gissing, or the new Mark Twain, who is hoped
for. Cobblers are never so numerous that each cannot
earn a decent living and smoke his pipe contentedly,
but there is not room for all the authors, and they are
driven ashore like shoals of herring and mackerel by the
pressure of the multitude of others behind them and
around them. They must compete with the great dead
and the living amateurs, without the jealous protection
of any labour union; yet it must be confessed that the
heaviest millstone around the neck of some of us, if
not most of us, is the handicap nature has weighed us
with in our own mediocrity. We see others climb to
alpine heights, and are not jealous of them, nor do they
from their eminence throw us over, or cease to be kind.

[26]

A BOY'S AMBITIONS

The compensation of the craft is in its fellowship and
camaraderie. We understand and sympathize with one
another whatever the disparity between us may be. For
myself I would stick to the business because it brings
even to the cobbler in it so many delightful friends.
I remember a little dinner at which all those present were
authors, distinguished and undistinguished.

"Haven't we had a good time?" cried Edmund Clar
ence Stedman, glowing at the end of it. "After all
we are never so happy as we are when we are among
ourselves."

[27J

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

WHEN that little story of mine appeared in all
the glory of print, Fame stood at my door,
a daughter of the stars in such array that it
blinded one to look at her. She has never come near
me since, and I have changed my opinion of her: a be
guiling minx, with little taste or judgment, and more
than her share of feminine lightness and caprice; an un
conscionable flirt, that is all she is.

I came to New York, and peeped into the doors of
the Tribune, the World, the Times, and the Sun with
all the reverence that a Moslem may feel when he beholds
Mecca. To me, in my ardour and innocence, journalism
was not as I regarded other professions, self-seeking
and commercial. I idealized it (I was only seventeen)
and attributed to it, the Church's aspiration and endeav
our for the betterment of the world. And its power
was on a parity with its beneficence. Thackeray's
apostrophe to it in "Pendennis" ran in my memory.
Notwithstanding my simplicity the power was not lost
sight of, nor the humble rank of some of those, like
Mr. Doolan, who exercised it :

They were passing through the Strand as they talked, and by a news
paper office, which was all lighted up and bright. Reporters were coming
out of the place, or rushing up to it in cabs; there were lamps burning in the
editors' rooms, and above, where the compositors were at work, the windows
of the building were in a blaze of gas. "Look at that, Pen," Warrington

[28]

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

said. "There she is — the great engine — she never sleeps. She has her
ambassadors in every quarter of the world, her couriers upon every road.
Her officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into statesmen's
cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal has an agent at this
minute giving bribes at Madrid, and another inspecting the price of pota
toes in Covent Garden. Look! here comes the Foreign Express galloping
in. They will be able to give the news to Downing Street to-morrow; funds

will rise or fall, fortunes be made or lost. Lord B will get up, and

holding the paper in his hand, and seeing the noble marquis in his place,
will make a great speech; and — and Mr. Doolan will be called away from
his supper at the Back Kitchen, for he is foreign sub-editor, and sees the
mail on the newspaper sheet before he goes to his own." And so talking
the friends turned into their chambers, as the dawn was beginning to peep*

The "bribery at Madrid" did not blot the picture,
as it ought to have done, and enthusiasm deflected the
moral sense, as I fear it often can.

I remembered also Trollope's Tom Tower and the
Jupiter (a transparent pseudonym for the Times) of
which Tom was an editor.

"Is this Mount Olympus?" asks the unbelieving stranger. "Is it from
these small, dark, dingy buildings that those infallible laws proceed which
cabinets are called upon to obey; by which bishops are to be guided, lords
and commons controlled, judges instructed in law, generals in strategy,
admirals in naval tactics, and orange-women in the management of their
barrows?" "Yes, my friend — from these walls. From here issue the
only known infallible bulls for the guidance of British souls and bodies.
This little court is the Vatican of England. Here reigns a pope, self-nomi
nated, self -consecrated — aye, and much stranger, too — self -believing !
a pope whom, if you cannot obey him I would advise you to disobey as
silently as possible; a pope hitherto afraid of no Luther; a pope who manages
his own inquisition, who punishes unbelievers as no most skilful inquisitor
of Spain ever dreamt of doing — one who can excommunicate thoroughly,
fearfully, radically; put you beyond the pale of men's charity; make you
odious to your dearest friends, and turn you into a monster to be pointed
at by the finger!"

All the papers were then engaged in eager warfare
with the Tweed Ring, and their columns were filled with

[29]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

exposures of its plunderings. The Tammany Tiger,
glossy and content, sprawled over the city, fatter than
it has ever been since, and bolder. Crime and vice
flaunted themselves unashamed. No Corns tock or Park-
hurst had yet tackled them. Unmentionable photographs
and books filled windows, and were peddled without
secrecy on the street corners to any one who wanted
them, either boys or men. Among the shops and banks
on Broadway between Broome Street and Astor Place,
rows of dives, bearing such names as The Do Drop Inn,
were open day and night, and the customers, some of
them minors, were waited on by tinselled and painted
harridans in stiff ballet skirts. Along the wharves
sailors were "Shangaied" under the eyes of public and
police, sand -bagged and bundled aboard ships in which
they did not want to go, and the poor immigrants
landing at Castle Garden were fleeced and beaten by
those "heelers" of Tammany appointed to protect
them. The "lid" was off: in fact, there was no "lid"
to the garbage barrel of those days; the average citizen
seemed to regard it as a superfluity.

While the public was apathetic the Press flamed with
moral and political indignation. Only one paper, I think,
stood for Tammany, the Star, edited by Joseph Howard,
Jr. The others were independent, and closely allied
in their hostility to the common enemy, the Times and
the Tribune taking the lead. They Were all dignified,
and, dare I say it, less frantic than they are now?
The interview had not become the scandalous intrusion,
the prying, house-breaking implement which abuse has
made it. The word "yellow" had not come into use:
it was inapplicable. As its advertisements declared,
the Sun "shone for all " except those whom Charles

[30]

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

A. Dana did not like. The Times and the Tribune
in appearance and in substance could not have been im
proved. The World, under Manton Marble, was "the
gentleman's newspaper," notable for its wit, its learn
ing, the polish of its style and its badinage. The Even
ing Post — how could it have been otherwise than good
under the editorship of William Cullen Bryant? No
other profession seemed to me to be so glorious or as
satisfying as that exemplified in the high purposes and
clean methods of those journals in the early seventies.

It was in the August of a bounteous year of fruit.
The smell of peaches and grapes piled in barrows and
barrels, scented the air, as it scents the memory still.
The odour of a peach brings back to me all the magic-
lantern impressions of a stranger — memories of dazzling,
dancing, tropical light, bustle, babble, and gayety; they
made me feel that I had never been alive before, and the
people of the old seaport, active as I had thought them,
became in a bewildered retrospect as slow and quiet as
snails. But far sweeter to me than the fragrance of
peaches were the humid whiffs I breathed from the
noisy press rooms in the Park Row basements, the smell
of the printers' ink as it was received by the warm,
moist rolls of paper in the whirring, clattering presses.
There was history in the making, destiny at her loom.
Nothing ever expels it: if once a taste for it is acquired,
it ties itself up with ineffaceable memories and longings,
and even in retirement and changed scenes restores the
eagerness and aspirations of the long-passed hour when it
first came over us with a sort of intoxication.

I had no introduction and no experience and was
prudent enough to foresee the rebuff that would surely
follow a climb up the dusky but alluring editorial stairs

[31]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

and an application for employment in so exalted a pro
fession by a boy of seventeen. I decided that I could
use more persuasion and gain a point in hiding my youth,
which was a menace to me, by writing letters, and so I
plunged through the post on Horace Greeley, on L. J.
Jennings, the brilliant, forgotten Englishman who then
edited the Times, on Mr. Dana, and on the rest. The
astonishing thing of that time, as I look back on it, was
my invulnerability to disappointments; I expected them
and was prepared for them, and when they came they
were as spurs and not as arrows nor as any deadly weapon.
They hardly caused a sigh except a sigh of relief from
the chafing uncertainties of waiting, and instead of
depressing they compelled advances in fresh directions
which soon became exhilarating, advances upon which
one started with stronger determination and fuller, not
lessened, confidence. O heart of Youth! How unflut-
tered thy beat! How invincible thou art in thine own
conceit! What gift of heaven or earth can compare
with thy supernal faith! "No matter how small the
cage the bird will sing, if it has a voice."

Had my letters been thrown into the waste
paper basket, after an impatient glance by the
recipients, I should not have been surprised or
more than a little nettled; but I received answers,
not encouraging, from both Horace Greeley and Mr.
Dana.

Mr. Jennings was a top-loftical gentleman, like the
heavy swell of a Robertsonian comedy, say Captain
Hawtree, who wore a monocle, and was very deliberate and
cutting in speech and manner. When he appeared, an
apparently languid witness, in the prosecution of one
of the abounding grafters, the counsel for the defendant

[32]

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

asked him what the bundle was which he carried under
his arm. I

"Guess," drawled Jennings, yawning out of his frame
of elegance and disdain.

"Answer my question, sir."

"Well, it might be clean collars and cuffs, and if you
press me I may lend some to you, for you need them very
badly." He would not be badgered or bullied. The
virulence of the counsel did not discompose him in the
least; it could not penetrate his immovable mask of
hauteur and scorn.

An Olympian like that had, of course, no interest in
letters from such an unaccredited and insignificant mortal
as I was. Adversity may have softened him later in
life, though adversity is seldom emollient: it rubs the
wounds with vinegar, not with oil, and embitters instead
of sweetening. Let us give him credit for all his splendid
service in overthrowing the Tweed Ring. He led in
that victory. Soon afterward he returned to his native
land and ended his days there in dignified and inconspi
cuous quiet. I have on my shelves now a book of his,
"Field Paths and Green Lanes," one of the best of its
kind, a classic in its way, describing country rambles
in the neighbourhood of London. A man who can
content himself with the simple pleasures of the way
farer, the beauty of nature, and humours of peasants may
stand scathless under reverses and not disquiet himself
because he is no longer seen or talked about.

Mr. Greeley was brief and final, but Mr. Dana,
writing in his own hand (how friendly it was of him!)
qualified an impulse to encourage with a tag for self-
protection. 'Your letter does you credit," he wrote.
Those five words put me on the threshold of my goal.

[331

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

'Your letter does you credit, and I shall be glad to hear
from you again - A door opened, and a flood of light

and warmth from behind it enveloped me as in a gown of
eiderdown. "I shall be glad to hear from you again
three or four years from now!" The door slammed
in my face, the gown slipped off and left me with a
chill. But I did not accuse Mr. Dana of deliberately
hurting me or think that he surmised how a polite eva
sion of that sort may without forethought be more cruel
than the coldest and most abrupt negative.

I went farther afield, despatching my letters to Chicago,
Philadelphia, Boston, and Springfield. In Philadel
phia there was a little paper called the Day, and this is
what its editor wrote to me:

There are several vacancies in the editorial department, but there is one
vacancy still worse on the ground floor, and the cashier is its much-harried
victim. You might come here, but you would starve to death, and saddle
your friends with the expenses of a funeral.

A man with humour enough for that ought to have
prospered, and I rejoiced to learn soon afterward that he
(I think his name was Cobb) had been saved from his
straits by an appointment to the United States Mint!

His jocularity did not shake my faith in the seriousness
of journalism. I had not done laughing when I opened
another letter written in a fine, crabbed hand like the
scratching of a diamond on a window pane, and as
I slowly deciphered its contents I could hardly believe
what I read. It was from Samuel Bowles the elder,
editor of the Springfield Republican, then as now one of
the sanest, most respected, and influential papers in the
country. He wanted a young man to relieve him of
some of his drudgery, and I might come on at once to

[34]

SAMUEL BOWLES

The Elder

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

serve as his private secretary. He did not doubt that
I could be useful to him, and he was no less sure that he
could be useful to me. Moreover my idea of salary,
he said — it was modest, but forty dollars a month —
"just fitted his." He was one of the great men of his
time when papers were strong or weak, potent in author
ity or negligible, in proportion to the personality of the
individual controlling them. He himself was the Repub
lican, as Mr. Greeley was the Tribune, Mr. Bennett
the Herald, Mr. Dana the Sun, Mr. Watterson the
Courier -Journal, and Mr. Murat Halstead the Cincinnati
Commercial, though, of course, like them, he tacitly
hid himself behind the sacred and inviolable screen of
anonymity, and none of them exercised greater power
over the affairs of the nation than he, out of the centre,
did from that charming New England town to which
he invited me. The opportunity was worth a premium,
such as is paid by apprentices in England for training
in ships and in merchants' and lawyers' offices; the
salary seemed like the gratuity of a too liberal and
chivalric employer, for no fees could procure from
any vocational institution so many advantages as were
to be freely had in association with him. He instructed
and inspired, and if he perceived ability and readiness
in his pupil (this was my experience of him), he was as
eager to encourage and improve him as any father could
be with a son, looking not for the most he could take
out of him in return for pay, but for the most he could
put into him for his own benefit.

Journalism to him was not the medium of haste,
passion, prejudice, and faction. He fully recognized
all its responsibilities, and the need of meeting them and
respecting them by other than casual, hap-hazard, and

[35]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

slipshod methods. He was an economist of words,
with an abhorrence of redundance and irrelevance; not
only an economist of words, but also an economist of
syllables, choosing always the fewer, and losing nothing
of force or precision by that choice. He had what was
not less than a passion for brevity. "What," he was
asked, "makes a journalist?" and he replied: "A nose
for news." But with him the news had to be sifted,
verified, and reduced to an essence, not inflated, distorted,
and garnished with all the verbal spoils of the reporter's
last scamper through the dictionary.

How sedate and prosperous Springfield looked to me
when I arrived there on an early spring day ! How clean,
orderly, leisurely, and respectable after the untidiness
and explosive anarchy of New York! I made for the
river, as I always do wherever a river is, and watched it
flowing down in the silver-gray light and catching bits
of the rain- washed blue sky. The trees had lost the
brittleness and sharpness of winter's drawing and their
outlines were softening into greenish velvet. In the
coverts, arbutus crept out with a hawthorn-like fragrance
from patches of lingering snow. The main street lead
ing into the town from the Massasoit House and the
station also had an air of repose and dignity as if those
who had business in it were not preoccupied by the frenzy
for bargains, but had time and the inclination for loiter
ing, politeness, and sociability. That was in 1870, and
I fear that Springfield must have lost some of its old-
world simplicity and leisureliness since then. I regret
that I have never been in it since, though I have passed
through it hundreds of times.

The office of the Republican was in keeping with its
environment, an edifice of stone or brick not more than

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

three or four stories high, neat, uncrowded, and quiet;
very different from the newspaper offices of Park Row,
with their hustle, litter, dust, and noise. I met no
one on my way upstairs to the editorial rooms, and
quaked at the oppressive solemnity and detachment of
it. I wondered if people were observing me from the
street and thought how much impressed they would
be if they divined the importance of the person they
were looking at, possibly another Tom Tower. The
vanity of youth is in the same measure as its valour;
withdraw one, and the other droops.

"Now," said Mr. Bowles sharply, after a brusque
greeting, "we'll see what you can do."

I was dubious of him in that first encounter. He was
crisp and quick in manner, clear-skinned, very spruce,
and clear-eyed; his eyes appraised you in a glance.

"Take that and see how short you can make it."

He handed me a column from one of the "exchanges,"
as the copies of other papers are called. I spent half
an hour at it, striking out repetitions and superfluous
adjectives and knitting long sentences into brief- ones.
Condensation is a fine thing, as Charles Reade once said,
and to know how to condense judiciously, to get all the
juice, without any of the rind or pulp, is as important
to the journalist as a knowledge of anatomy to the figure
painter.

I went over it a second time before I handed it back
to him as the best I could do. I had plucked the fatted
column to a lean quarter of that length, yet I trembled
and sweated.

"Bah!" he cried, scoring it with a pencil, which sped
as dexterously as a surgeon's knife. "Read it now.
Have I omitted anything essential?"

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

He had not; only the verbiage had gone. All that was
worthy of preservation remained in what the printer
calls a "stickful. " That was my first lesson in journalism.

Attempts are often made to define the difference be
tween journalism and literature without more than an
approach to a generally satisfactory conclusion. "Lit
erature in a hurry" has the impact of an epigram, but
it is based on a false premise. Literature in the true
sense is never in a hurry: it is leisurely and discursive;
an art of the temperament, of the spirit, and of the
finer senses; the evidence of things not seen, interpreting
itself now playfully by indirection, like a sprite, now
in the full value of picked words of unexpected and
individual illumination. Journalism, on the contrary,
must always be, or should be, in a white heat of energy
and precipitancy, catching things as they fly, not decor
ating them or fondling them in rhetoric or musing on
them as literature may, but seizing them with breathless
expedition. It should be limited to matters of fact and
should not be expansive and imaginative, but concrete
and concise, a process of elision and enucleation, and that
is how, I am pretty sure, Mr. Bowles took it. What a
relief it would be if his view of it prevailed in all news
paper offices !

That word "enucleation" may be unfamiliar to some
readers. I discovered it by chance after I had become
an editor myself. Usually you say to your contributor
that his article may be used if he will "boil it down,"
a kitchen phrase lacking both elegance and delicacy.
Now I say "enucleate it"; that is, separate the wheat
from the chaff, or bring out something, as a kernel, from
its enveloping husk or shell. It may drive him to the
dictionary, but then he cannot fail to acknowledge its

[381

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

aptness. I was so elated by my discovery that I crowed
over it to a medical friend.

"One of the commonest words in the profession; we
are constantly using it," he said loftily, with an air of
condescension. "You literary fellows, editors included,
know less than any other people in the world. I always
say so. Think of the ignorance of anybody who reaches
middle life before he finds out the meaning of a simple
and obvious word like that!"

He was jealous. I rejected the next article he sent
me. He was always bothering me with articles, and
was more vain of one accepted at fifty dollars than of a
successful operation for appendicitis, which too easily
brought him five hundred.

The ice of Mr. Bowles was only on the surface. He
reminded me of old Adam in "As You Like It" — frosty
but kindly. If one flinched at his angles, he melted and
grew warm. The months I spent under him were as
pleasant as they were profitable. The staff included
Frank B. Sanborn (who is still active at eighty), and
Charles G. Whiting, the poet. The ship of stars was in
full sail. Think how splendid the period was when new
novels were issuing from Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins,
Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, and Bulwer Lytton!
Sanborn, who from 1868 to 1872 was a resident of Spring
field, received advance sheets of "Little Women" from
his friend, Miss Alcott, and I read them, behind his
back as it were, before he could cut out the extracts
he needed to justify the praise he lavished in a many-
columned review. "The Story of a Bad Boy," with
all its humour, had just finished its course in Our Young
Folks, and it at once put Aldrich on one of the highest
pedestals in my pantheon. Week after week instal-

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

ments of "Edwin Drood" were appearing in Every Sat
urday, and then, one afternoon, I read with moistened
eyes on the bulletin board on the street front, that Charles
Dickens was dead. A hush fell over the office and the
town. Men and women wept. It was as though each
of us had lost the dearest of friends. Never, I suppose,
has any other author evoked such grief by his passing.

I was drawn back into the whirlpool; I liked excite
ment, and returned to New York, a much more eligible
person, thanks to Mr. Bowles, than I was when I left it.
Whitelaw Reid had become managing editor of the
Tribune. I had seen him in Broadway (one saw every
body in Broadway in those days) dark, tall, straight,
and handsome, but haughty in bearing; a man not
likely to be mistaken for a trifler, irresolute and vague
of purpose, or for a renegade to ambition. There was
an air of puissance and of assured authority about him,
and a glance revealed a martinet. However, he was
very kind to me.

"Your letter persuades me," he wrote, "that you are
the sort of man I wish to attach to my staff, but there
is no vacancy. Still, if you come to New York, I think
I can promise you at least enough work to pay your board
bill."

I reminded him of that letter when I was lunching
with him last summer, at Dorchester House, the palace
he has occupied since he became with distinguished suc
cess ambassador to the Court of St. James. Time and
affluence have mellowed him; velvet-gloved diplomacy
has increased his charm: "Think of it, my dear," he
said, taking me over to Mrs. Reid, "Mr. Rideing did
me the honour to serve with me on the Tribune ten
years before we were married!" How could he have

[40]

HON. WHITELAW REID

FIRST LESSONS IN JOURNALISM

been nicer ! I am willing to expose my vanity in quot
ing him.

I was put among a crowd of "space men" employed
to help out the regular salaried reporters. At half past
ten every morning, all the members of the city depart
ment were expected to be present at the office, and at
that hour the city editor had made up the "assignment
book," in which the reporters found opposite to their
names specifications of the duties assigned to them for
the day. It was an index to the extraordinary variety
that enters into a reporter's life. Not a spot in the city
was left uncovered in the search for news.

Those were busy times in New York. The progress
of the raid on Tammany filled the papers to the exclu
sion of other things. There was usually more work
than the regular staff could attend to, though it included
about thirty salaried reporters, and after they had been
sent in every direction there still remained a number of
"assignments" for the "outsiders" who were waiting
for a chance job.

I waited at the office to see a proof of an article I had
written and went home happy on finding that it filled
nearly three quarters of a column. Three quarters of
a column at ten dollars per column — the price then paid
to "outsiders" — would make seven dollars and a half,
a good day's work, thought I. But on the next morning
I found that, as the pressure on his space had increased,
the night editor had been obliged to cut my article down
to about ten lines.

I haunted the office early and late, but everything I
did was compressed into a meagre paragraph, and at
the end of a week my total earnings amounted to less
than five dollars. The results of the second week were

[41]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

a little better, and of the third week better still,
though not yet enough to pay my expenses, moderate
as they were. Before the end of the month, however,
I was sent to Nor walk to look up one of the "ring,"
and through real-estate records and the town officials
I discovered proofs of his frauds.

I had just time to catch the Boston express for New
York, and, sitting on one trunk in the baggage car, I made
a desk of another, and dashed off my article as the train
whirled along through the night. I appreciated the
value of the facts I had obtained, and knew that T could
elaborate them to any extent I pleased. My pencil flew
over the paper with a facility of which I had not thought
it capable. When we reached Forty-Second Street it
was close upon midnight, and no horse-car was visible.
I could not afford a hack, so I set off at a run for the office,
and never stopped until I dropped my article on the
city editor's desk. The next morning the article ap
peared "double leaded" on the front page; it made a
stir, and in the afternoon he came to me and told me
that there was a place for me on the regular staff with
a salary of twenty-five dollars a week.

Ill

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

THE Tribune had not yet moved into its present
commodious quarters, nor given occasion for
Mr. Dana's salute to Mr. Reid as the "young
man in the tall tower." It was housed in a drab, pre
carious shell on the same site. The rooms of the editorial
department were small, dirty, and dilapidated, but what
a staff it was that crowded them! — John Hay, George
Ripley, Isaac H. Bromley, Bayard Taylor, William Win
ter, E. L. Burlingame, and Clarence Cook, besides Mr.
Greeley and Mr. Reid. There were not desks or chairs
enough, and sometimes we had to wait in turn for
them, standing until they became vacant. Clarence
Cook was the art critic and a severe one. "Are you
through with that desk, Cook ? " Bromley asked him,
and, on receiving assent, added, " Then scrape away all
the blood and feathers and let me sit down."

Hay delighted everybody in the office by his wit and
kindness. One evening he cried out to Bromley and
Bishop: "All done, fellows!"

"What have you been writing about?" Bishop asked.

"I've been going for them kings again, and if they
only knew it, they'd be shaking in their boots."

On another occasion long afterward, when the anti-
imperialists were urging that the United States should
not retain the Philippines but give them away, or sell
them to Germany or Japan, Hay said:

[43]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

"That reminds me of the young woman who had got
religion and was telling her experience in a conference
meeting. Wishing to adduce proof of the thoroughness
of her conversion, she said: 'When I found that my
jewellery was dragging me down to hell, I gave it all to
my sister."

He wore no beard in those days, only a raven and
somewhat desperate-looking moustache, and he always
dressed in black, whether for mourning or not, I do not
know. Out of doors he sported a silk hat in all kinds
of weather. I remember his attire because it was
similar to that which the artist provided for John Oak-
hurst in one of the illustrations to Bret Harte's "Outcasts
of Poker Flat."

He was very kind in many ways to the younger men.
Occasionally the voice of a novice in the office would be
heard above the sound of moving pens and pencils, plead
ing for information: "Who was Dahlberg?" "What
did Van Heemskirk do?" "Where's Kastamoonee?"
A murmur of protest instead of reply would follow:
"Shut up!" "Go back to school!" "Throw some
thing at him!" Each had his own difficulties and pro
tested against the interruption, except Hay. While
the questioner searched the ceiling in despair relief
would come from Hay as from a talking encyclopaedia,
without a moment's delay in the task that absorbed him.

Mine was night work; that is to say, it began earlier
than five o'clock every afternoon, and never ended before
half -past two in the morning, when, in the fetid air of the
low-roofed, narrow, insanitary room, packed with re
porters and assistant editors, and foggy with tobacco,
I could at last stretch in my chair and chat for a few
minutes with my vis-a-vis, the amiable and optimistic

[44]

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

Isaac Nelson Ford, who after more than forty years still
serves the same paper in the important and enviable
position of its London correspondent, as successor to Mr.
George W. Smalley. I call Ford the oldest of my friends,
but except in years he is the youngest.

We read the city "copy," polished it, condensed it,
and gave it headings, ever watchful in all our haste that
nothing libellous or contrary to the traditions and usages
of the paper should pass. The matter reached us sheet
by sheet, as it was dashed off by the men in the throes
of the closing hour, and after revision, which eliminated
errors of fact and taste, it as rapidly flew from us into
the creaking little box which shot up and down between
us and the composing room, on the next floor. There
were no pneumatic tubes, telephones, or electric bells
in that office. Up and down continually went the box,
slung in its chute by a frayed cord, until the last line of
the last sheet of quires and reams ended the strain in
the two words, "Good Night."

Those were extraordinarily busy and exciting times,
and every man on the staff gave himself unsparingly to
them. The exposure and defeat of the Tweed Ring
had hardly been accomplished before Mr. Greeley re
ceived the Liberal Republican nomination for the presi
dency, and throughout that campaign the Tribune
office became the rallying place of the politicians who
supported him, including diamond-fronted leaders and
short-haired, brown-mouthed "heelers" of the slum
wards. They were at our elbows and over our shoulders
early and late, sober or drunk, clean in person sometimes
and frequently not, decent in speech and occasionally
indecent, ready to talk to the "devil" if they could not
reach Mr. Greeley himself, or some one near him. The

T451

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

foul air became fouler and more difficult to breathe; the
fumes of alcohol and monstrous cigars took away the
flavour of the mild tobacco we smoked in our inoffensive
pipes, such as "Bull Durham" and "Fruits and Flowers."
The barbarians were upon us and civilization seemed
"played out."

Mr, Greeley was a pathetic figure through it all,
wearied, excitable, and short-tempered. His face was
as clear and as ingenuous as a child's. An actor making
up for the part of an idealized farmer in a play could not
have proved fidelity to nature better than by reproducing
his open and fresh countenance with its careless fringes
and wisps of hair, and his loose, easy-fitting clothes,
neat and clean, but with no more shape and no finer
texture than the Abigail of any old homestead could
give them. The soft hat on his head might have been
dropped there by a wind from heaven. Indifference to
appearances and no thought but of comfort were pro
claimed almost too loudly, and his habit of having one
trousers-leg turned up while the other was turned down
left even in my innocent and unsophisticated mind an
unwilling suspicion of intention.

He seemed too like "the real thing" to be it. Amiable
and odorous of pastures and barns and hayricks as
he looked in repose, he was irascible, and perhaps not
less like the real farmer because he swore. One of the
reporters had been sent out to investigate a charge of
adulteration brought against a firm of confectioners, and
confirmed it. When his report appeared, Mr. Greeley
was furious, for the confectioners were old friends of
his. Excuses that should have been unnecessary did
not appease him.

"G — d d — n him! discharge him!" he cried shrilly,

[46]

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

though curiously enough his face preserved its apostolic
benignity, even while the oaths were flying from his
lips. I am glad to add that he probably never thought
of the matter again, and that the blameless young man
was not discharged.

His squalls usually blew themselves out without up
rooting anything. One morning he came down to the
office in a rage because there was a misprint in one
of his editorials. Bounding upstairs into the composing
room, and shaking a copy of the paper folded across the
page to show the offence, he shrieked: "Show me
the man! Show me the man that did this!"

A very old compositor was pointed out to him. Mr.
Greeley looked at the culprit, who shrank under his gaze.
All his indignation subsided, not another word was
spoken. He turned and crept downstairs as if he and
not the old compositor had been the offender.

He wrote in another editorial of "champagne and
Heidsieck, " referring to the lavish living of the Erie
conspirators, and when the tautology of the phrase was
explained to him he said: "Well, I guess I am the only
man in this office that could make a mistake of that sort."

His outbreaks of temper often rent the air toward the
end of his campaign, and when the debacle ensued, loyal
and energetic as we had been in his cause, our sighs had
their source in relief as much as in sorrow. The morning
after the elections an editorial was printed under the
head of "Crumbs of Comfort." The crumbs of comfort
were that, though Mr. Greeley had lost, consolation
could be derived from the thought that the office would
be free in the future from the invasion of the dirty bar
barians of his camp. It echoed, I think, the private
opinions of all of us.

[47]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Restored to its former condition, overcrowded as
that was, the office became quiet and spacious in com
parison with what it had been during the campaign.
While the editorial was a fine example of the mordant
satire poignantly phrased which more than one of the
staff excelled in, no one could regard it as politic or
gracious, which, of course, its author never meant it
to be. Mr. Greeley wanted a retraction or an apology,
but it never appeared, and gossip whispered that that
made the last insupportable straw in the burden of the
chagrined and failing old man, who soon afterward re
tired to his farm at Chappaqua.

Are there coffee and cake saloons in the basements of
Park Row and the tail end of Chatham Street now?
Is Oliver Hitchcock's gone? In the early seventies
there were plenty of them. They existed for owls:
for the conductors and drivers of the old, jingling, creep
ing Third and Fourth Avenue horse-cars; for newsboys
and bootblacks; for the unwashed and unhoused waifs
of the night; for printers, reporters, and editors. All
they offered was coffee in earthenware cups as heavy as
bombshells, and hot soda biscuits upon which you
deposited pats of very yellow butter similar to that
slighted by Perkins Middlewick in "Our Boys" as
"common Do'set. " The tables were uncovered, the floors
bare, or sanded, or sprinkled with sawdust. The gas
waxed and waned, an emblem of despair and irresolution.

But what merry times we had there when we descended
into that atmosphere of old leather and old clothes at
about midnight for half an hour of rest and simple fare !
Distinctions of rank were sunk in those intermissions,
and sometimes the young fellows had the glory of sitting
with their elders and superiors — with John Hay, Bromley,

[481

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

Noah Brooks, and Charles T. Congden, that queer and
brilliant man, whose editorials were so good that they
received the unusual honour of republication in a
book. I have seen Mark Twain and Bret Harte there
also, and now and then our laughter would be so loud
that the dingy, taciturn company at the other tables
would look at us suspiciously, wondering how we could
be so gay in a world that was so dark and joyless to
them.

Years afterward, when Mr. Hay preceded Mr. Reid in
the ambassadorial honours of London and received his
friends at his stately residence in Carlton House Terrace,
you had but to whisper in his ear, "Oliver Hitchcock,"
and however serious he might be his face would at once
soften into a knowing smile, as though you had spoken
a password of fellowship in the guarded privileges and
pleasures of some secret society.

Our work done, Ford and I flew together for the
three o'clock boat of the Fulton Ferry to Brooklyn,
swallowing an oyster on the way at one of the booths
in the old market. The river was unbridged, but night
after night, month after month, we watched and were
fascinated by the slow growth of the two squat piers, then
no higher than a house, that were to anchor the cables
of the bridge that was to be. The spire of Trinity pricked
the stars, it soared so much above its surroundings.
The coastwise steamers were cockle shells; the newest
ocean liner, talked of as a marvel, was less than a
twelfth the size of the Olympic and of no more than half
the speed of the Mauretania. All the lights the river
caught were of oil and gas, yellow spots insufficient to
disperse its mystery as it sobbed and swirled under the
impenetrable curtain of the night. Brooklyn was peace-
No 1

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

fully, drowsily, respectably suburban; it took our tired
heads on its bosom and rested them like a mother.

I never got to bed earlier than four o'clock, and had
to be called at nine, because in addition to my Tribune
work I was sending one weekly letter to the Boston Globe
and another to the historical Galignani's Messenger in
Paris. Youth is a spendthrift, and never saves itself or
reckons until the mischief is done how usurious nature is
with her creditors when they mortgage themselves to her.

There was security in my new position, and of course
I, boylike, exaggerated its distinction and importance;
but I missed the variety and freedom of my work as a
space man. No other work could be more full of interest
and adventure than that of a reporter who scours the
city and suburbs in search of material — not the reporter
who, depending on stenography, is sent out to report
meetings and functions, but the casual, peripatetic ob
server who must discover things unforeseen, or go hungry.
A paragraph or an article acquired value with the Tribune
if it had some literary quality such as neatness of phrase
and the flash of colour, though it might not have any
bearing on the day's news. The city is packed with
curiosities which the inhabitants in their haste and
preoccupation do not see until their attention is called
to them. When the late James R. Osgood visited Lon
don for the first time I asked him what he thought of it.

"That it had never been discovered before I got there,"
he replied. "There were so many things in it that T
had never been told of; the hundreds of books I had read
about it had not included half."

And New York, or any city, is ever new and always
has fresh material to unfold to him whose observation
is not obscured by familiarity or indifference.

[50]

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

My beat took in the wharves, the doss houses, the
hospitals, the medical schools, the foreign colonies,
the shops of queer trades, Castle Garden, prisons, and
the morgue.

One day I visited a row of tenement houses in Willett
Street, monopolized by ragpickers, who are a much
cleaner and more prosperous class than inference makes
them. The head man was Martin Schreiner, who told
me that when he first came to America from Germany
he had been employed as a domestic servant by Wash
ington Irving at No. 3 Bridge Street, round the corner
from Bowling Green, the neighbourhood of fashion and
substance in those days, as it ought to be now; for
where else, from the Battery to Yonkers, is there so
beautiful a prospect as the queen of bays and its cres
cent of distant, softly moulded hills, changing in colour
every hour and mixing the sweetness of country air
with the breath of the sea? If I were a millionaire I'd
build there now.

We sat and smoked together, Martin and I, watching
the ragpickers coming home and sifting their bundles
in the yard, while he held the ghost of Diedrich Knick
erbocker by the coat tails. The house was not Wash
ington's own, but that of Ebenezer Irving, his brother,
and for his privacy Washington had a front room on the
second floor, used in combination as sitting room, bed
room and study. Much of his time was spent there.
After an early cup of coffee and a slice of dry toast with
the rest of the family, it was his habit to seclude himself
until eleven o'clock, and then to set forth on his morning
walk in fastidious attire, as spotless and as smooth as
that of a dandy. He dined with the family at three
in the afternoon, drinking one glass of Madeira, one and

[51]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

no more. I remembered how abstemious he was — how
shocked when he called on Charles Dickens in the Astor
House, and Dickens instantly asked him what he would
have to drink.

He was not often home to tea, but was usually in
his room by nine o'clock, and again at work. The room
was furnished cheerfully, with plenty of books and
pictures, and in winter a blazing coal fire burned in the
open grate, before which he delighted to sit. When he
retired, a small table, holding writing materials, a few
books, and some wax candles, was drawn to the side of
the bed, and from time to time during the night, as
thoughts occurred to him, they were jotted down for
future use. Much of his work was done at night as he
lay in his bed, and the last of the candles would some
times be aglow in the early morning.

If his ghost could have heard all that Martin said of
his generosity to him and the other servants, all of whom
had been in the family for long periods; of his affection
for his nephews and nieces, and of his courtesy to all
whom he met, I have no doubt its modesty would have
compelled it to vanish sooner than it did.

At the corner of Spring and Varick Streets remained
the last of the old bell towers of the fire department,
surviving the days when there were no alarm boxes
and no telegraph. In a box at the top of a spiral stair
way, twisting through the open frame, a watchman
scanned the neighbourhood through a binocular glass, like
the lookout in a cro'nest at sea, scrutinizing and weigh
ing the possibilities of every glow and every plume of
smoke, and raising a lever which rang a deep and solemn
bell whenever he discovered an accidental or incen
diary blaze. No candle or lamp was allowed in the

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

tower, and the old man was glad to have me sit and smoke
with him, as I often did, when night drew on, and the
lights visible earlier went out faster and faster after ten
o'clock. Under his rough coat he was a sentimentalist.
"Yes, 'tis lonely I be when I see them go, wan by wan,
like friends dying." He was an inarticulate Teufels-
drockh, and I imagined him thinking what he could not
say: "Upward of five hundred thousand two-legged
animals without feathers lie round us in horizontal posi
tions, their heads all in nightcaps, and full of foolish
dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers
in his rank dens of shame; and the mother, with stream
ing hair, kneels over her pallid dying infant, whose
cracked lips only her tears now moisten. All these
heaped and huddled together, with nothing but a little
carpentry and masonry between them; crammed in like
salted fish in their barrel, or weltering, shall I say?
like an Egyptian pitcher of tamed vipers, each strug
gling to get its head above the others. Such work goes
on under that smoke counterpane ! But I, mein Werther,
sit above it all; I am alone with the stars."

I have said that you met everybody on Broadway
between Twenty-third Street and the City Hall. Walk
ing was far more a habit as a constitutional exercise
than it is now. Day after day I used to meet William
Cullen Bryant on his way to or from the office of the
Evening Post, diminutive, erect, keen-eyed, and buoyant,
with a streaming white beard, the picture of Father Time
himself; Edwin Booth, with his ivory face, abstracted,
and steeped in gloom; Lester Wallack, above ordinary
height, and handsome, a modern Beau Brummel, but
nearly as much "made up" on the street as in the
theatre, his ringlets and moustache dyed to a purplish

[53]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

jet, his cheeks artificially ruddy; Peter Cooper, tall
but stooping and shuffling, with a long, pale, dreamy
face and a snowy, blowing, uncared-for beard; Roscoe
Conkling, pale of face, imperious in demeanour, with a
long nose that always seemed to be fishing for his chin,
little different from the caricatures which represented
him as a pouter pigeon; Samuel J. Tilden, small and
puckered wearing an indefinable smile behind which
lay the unfathomable; Dion Boucicault, floating in the
music of his own brogue, round-faced, pallid, white-tied,
like a priest, who could not speak without being witty and
flattering; the fascinating E. A. Sothern, the original
"Lord Dundreary," debonair, polished, lithe, with an
English complexion and fine features, and the air of
drawing-rooms rather than of the theatre; the "Count
Johannes" (alias Jones), who was theatrical or nothing,
the barn-stormer of caricature, who played with a wire
screen in front of the foot-lights to protect him from the
missiles his audiences took in baskets to throw at him —
the "crushed tragedian" parodied during a long season
by Sothern in an amusing comedy by Byron and -
"Commodore" Vanderbilt, the founder of the Vander-
bilt fortunes.

The "Commodore" and I became friends. He re
sembled a bishop or an archbishop in his benignity and
suavity. A white tie and a long black coat, like a cassock,
encouraged that inference, but had you seen him any
where near the House of Lords you would have more
probably taken him for an hereditary legislator, an ideal
aristocrat of acres, ancient privileges, and long descent.
He was neat and dapper, with a girlish complexion
of pink and white, and abundant hair as soft and glossy
as the down of a bird. When he smiled and bowed, it

[54]

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

was with the air of waiting on your pleasure and being
anxious to hear how he could be of service to so meritori
ous and distinguished a person as yourself. How could
this be the old ferry-man who, scarcely more than a gener
ation before, had sailed his sloop between the Battery
and Staten Island, carrying passengers and freight at
reasonable rates? The illusion lasted until he spoke,
and then speech, so often the betrayer of fine appearances,
put him down to the level of the gossip of the country
store. Though his vocabulary was meagre, it did not
lack vigour or spiciness, and eked out by slang and ex
pletives it never left you in doubt as to his meaning.

He had a private office in a dingy, old-fashioned little
house just west of Broadway in Amity Street. I think
it was in Amity Street, though it may have been only
contiguous to that. Inside and outside the house had
the aspect of a quiet, private dwelling, and when I
called, he always received me in the parlour in the most
encouraging way, beaming on me as if I had been at least
a promising nephew of his, or perhaps a grandson of
whom he was fond and had reason to be proud.
"Sit down, sonny; sit down. Cold, ain't it?"
If the weather was at all chilly a light fire of sea-coal
was sure to be burning in the grate, and he would seat
me at the side of it while he stretched himself at the other
and toasted his feet over the fender. His time seemed to
be wholly and ungrudgingly at my disposal, as though
he had nothing else to do in. the world but talk to me,
or listen to me. Now, I thought, I shall get something
worth while, a column or two that should lead to immedi
ate promotion for me. Then I would ply him with ques
tions of ships, railways, politics, and finance. He lis
tened to every question and pondered it, rubbing his

[55]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

hands now and then, smiling all the time the heavenly
smile of a good bishop and occasionally chuckling.
But he never answered me.

"That's interesting. Say! That's a poser ! How did
you happen to think of that, sonny? Now tell me what
you think of it? — that's what I want to know. Beats
the Dutch how you fellows find out all these things."

And he would rise and pat my head, or rumple my
hair in an ostensible ecstasy of appreciation, without
once revealing his own opinions on anything at all.
He had not the faintest idea who Socrates was, but
his method was Socratic. It was vexing to leave him
without a line to print as the result of my call on him,
which to an onlooker must have seemed so opportune
for confidences and revelations. Confidences and revela
tions there were — mine, however, not his — and I am sure
they were immeasurably less profitable to him than his
would have been to me. Yet when he saw me to the door,
to which I went with never a sign from him that I had
outstayed my welcome, he would repeat the patting of
my head, and say, "Come again, sonny," and under
the charm of his geniality I would forget my disap
pointment.

All I ever got out of him, except the outlines of this
portrait, was the warmth of that fire and his interest
in me, which, flattering enough, must have been dis
sembled, or taken only because his heart was open to
youth and my simplicity amused him. He might
have put money in my purse, but I have learned by
experience that rich men do not want company. They
see, perhaps, a mischief in wealth which I, and many
others, have not yet discerned and could readily extenu
ate if it were revealed in all its iniquity.

F561

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

Each generation has its own pills and plasters, and its
own surgeons and physicians, who, like all other public
servants, distinguished and undistinguished, are dis
placed and forgotten by the next. If I mention Willard
Parker, Lewis A. Sayre, Ogden Doremus, Alfred Loomis,
Fordyce Barker, William A. Hammond, Stephen Smith,
and J. C. Draper, their names will fall flat on the reader,
unless he is old or middle-aged, and fail to awaken in a
lay ear any echo of the reputation they had in their day.
I attended the clinics and lectures, not as a student, but
in the pursuit of any scenes or events which could be
turned into "copy," the trade word for the written
sheets which feed the insatiable, gormandizing press.
I see myself again in the curious, observant groups of
students going from cot to cot and from ward to ward
at the heels of those professors, listening to them in the
lecture room and in the operating theatre, with drawn
nerves and bated breath. I suppose it is the reaction
from "drawn nerves" and from the tension of their
occupation and the responsibilities and solemnity of it
which makes medical students so obstreperous when
the strain on them ceases.

In the intermissions between lectures the air is filled
with catcalls, whistling, and snatches of song. A sign
positively forbids smoking, but they smoke, and not
only smoke, but whistle, sing, and whoop. A small
pillow is discovered on the rostrum, and a demure-looking
youth who has spied it from afar strides over the rail
and secures it. Returning to his seat, he poises it and
threatens to dash it at the men in the row below him,
who duck in anticipation of it, while several others in
the row above, who are not threatened, grin with delight.
But by a quick, sly movement he aims at the latter and

[571

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

it knocks the hats off at least half a dozen, and then a
battle for the possession of the missile begins. It flies
from head to head, and hand to hand, up the theatre,
down the theatre, and diagonally; it sends a plug hat
spinning, and brings colour into many faces, and its
course is followed by shrieks of laughter, mingled with
catcalls. The pursuit of it becomes fierce; but after a
lapse of five minutes a whirring electric bell is heard,
and the game is abandoned.

A portly gentleman enters the stage, who from the
firmness of his tread and the erectness of his body might
be a general reviewing his troops. He is massively built,
and has a full, round face, a clipped head, and a heavy
moustache. He is dressed in a fashionable frock-coat
and light trousers. His hair is nearly gray, and as he
strides across the stage, waiting for the applause to cease,
he looks* more like a general than ever. His manner
somehow implies that time is very precious with him,
and he talks in a rapid but rather husky voice. Time is
precious with him; his private practice is enormous,
and patients come thousands of miles to see him. It is
wonderful that he finds time for the college; but, more
than that, he is a voluminous writer of books on his
specialty, and a famous entertainer.

He writes novels, too, just to show his literary friends,
he tells them, how easy novel writing is and how vain
glorious they are in making much of it. This is Surgeon-
General William A. Hammond, the celebrated neurol
ogist, lecturer on diseases of the mind and nervous
system.

Then the professor of chemistry appears, Dr. R.
Ogden Doremus. He is over six feet in height — a
graceful man, with easy manners and a pleasant face.

[58]

Courtesy of N. Y. Tribune.

HORACE GREELEY

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

The left sleeve of his frock-coat is empty, and swings
loosely as he bends over the table, but he manages his
right arm and left armpit so cleverly that his deficiency
causes him very little inconvenience. His voice is agree
able and his phrases are well chosen. From time to time
he interpolates a humorous suggestion or allusion, as,
in describing the various sources of lime, he exhibits
an oyster shell, and regrets that it is not a half shell
with a Shrewsbury on it. He speaks vivaciously, and
the hour slips by very pleasantly; he bows gracefully
and retires; the blackboard doors close again, and again
the students lapse into babel.

Another lecturer: his hands are in his pockets; he
saunters in, and you expect him to yawn. But he is one
of the busiest of men; his manner belies him. A smile
plays about his face, from which flows a patriarchal
beard; his eyes twinkle, and his voice is pleasant. He
beckons the students who are scattered, urging them to
fill the front rows.

"Come down here and I'll ask you questions ; it's
the best thing in the world for you."

In their own vernacular, the students do not "see it";
they are not anxious to be quizzed, but after some
further pressure they draw themselves together. He
begins the lecture with an interrogation, and one of the
audience essays an answer without premeditation.
"Hold on!" cries the professor good-naturedly; "it
isn't half as easy as that. I twisted it to make it inter
esting for you." • And the proper answer is some time in
forthcoming. When the answer is given, the professor
adds to it, eliminates words inexact in meaning, and
substitutes others precisely correct; by hints and signs
he attracts a blunderer from a false conclusion to

[59]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

a proper one; and, having drawn him to that point,
he expands it with fluency and emphasis, as he walks
to and fro across the rostrum, now beating his hand
on the rail in accentuation of the syllables, then fold
ing his arms as he sits on the corner of a table and
expounds the electric and chemic laws with the bland
simplicity of a gossip at the club.

He is Dr. John C. Draper, the renowned chemist,
whose father, a member of the same faculty, was the
first to photograph the human countenance.

The students were from all parts of the world, eveiK
from Ceylon, Siam, and South Australia. Many ofl
the native Americans were the sons of small farmers^
and artisans of the Southern and Western states. They
lived on four or five dollars a week in shabby boarding
houses, and trudged through the winter's snow and ice
to lectures and demonstrations without overcoats and
in leaky boots, reading at night by the light of candles
or kerosene lamps in their cold and gloomy attics. Some
of the faculty were of similarly humble origin. Pro
fessor Lewis A. Sayre, for instance, had sprung from
Kentucky, a raw, uncouth, unlettered boy, with not
more than two or three dollars a week above his tuition
fees, and no cheese to his bread. He had no time to ac
quire the insinuating, caressing, cooing polish of the
bedside manner, and he despised it. He was loud and
impetuous; a giant in figure, tempestuous and over
whelming in his heartiness outside the hospital. If you
saw him coming you stopped and threw up your hands,
or tucked them under your arms, or behind your back,
to save them from a crushing, excruciating grasp which
once learned could not be forgotten or permitted again.
Yet he was at the head of his profession.

[60]

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

The city ended at Fifty-ninth Street. William Black
described it as Paris with a touch of the backwoods;
another visitor's simile was, "A savage in his war paint,
showing dirt beneath his feathers, beads, and trinkets. "
The tunnel and the station at Forty-second Street were
unfinished. The trains came in and out on the surface
to and from the terminus on the site of the Madison
Square Garden. Above Fifty-ninth Street on both
sides of the Park spread Shantytown, reaching to Harlem
and Manhattan ville. Streets had been graded and paved
over a wide area, through the speculations of Tweed and
Company, but there were no houses on them; many
people smiled and declared there never would be any
houses; that the work and material had been thrown
away at the impulse of a grafter's dream.

All down in the hollows, between the graded streets,
thousands and thousands of acres were under cultiva
tion by squatters, and without other inclosure to the land
than the embankments formed around the hollows by
the foundations of the streets. Agriculture was carried
on with primitive simplicity and under a picturesqueness
of condition that set an artist on the edge of desire.
Many square miles were green with vegetables. You
saw the gardeners with their wives and mothers bending
to their work; you heard the cackling of geese, the clut
ter of fowls, and the squealing of pigs. The dwellings
might have been blown together out of scrap heaps.
Chimneys were made of old stove and drain pipes, roofs
of tarpaulin, threadbare bits of carpets, and rotten can
vas, where now are the palaces of multi-millionaires.
Though the tenants were squatters, and understood
the precariousness of their holdings, they resisted evic
tion at the point of the knife and the muzzles of guns.

[61]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

I discovered "copy" there also. All was fish that
came to my net, all grist that came to my mill. But
Broadway was my gold coast, my Spanish Main, which I,
the beach comber, patrolled with an open, comprehen
sive eye for the flotsam and jetsam unseen or misprized
by others.

If we could step back into the past from to-day, the
first impression of change in the city would strike through
the ear: it would be of quietude; and next would be of
room to spare and the absence of density and pressure,
though we of that time, sufficient unto ourselves, never
anticipated that the future would impute to us less
bustle and less noise than its own. There were no shops
east or west of Broadway above Fourteenth Street.
Madison Square and Union Square were surrounded
by the houses of the well-to-do, which also lined the
side streets in stiff, regimental uniformity. Here and
there whitish sandstone or marble was used, as in the
Stewart palace, with which we reduced the stranger
within the gates to humility; but it was the era of brown-
stone, and the "brownstone front," symbolizing ele
gance, respectability, and opulence, frowned down upon
us, or smiled if we were friends, wherever we went.
Each house was just like its neighbours; it had a high
stoop and a frescoed vestibule of pseudo Arabesque
design, and in spring and autumn evenings, when the
warmth was premature or outrunning the season, the
family assembled on the steps and, bareheaded, received
callers or chatted among themselves without any preju
dice against the sacrifice of privacy. Charming indeed
were those stoops as one saw them in the languorous
dusk and overheard the whispers and laughter of young
men and groups of girls in white, butterfly dresses.

[62}

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

I read in the window of a shop displaying imitation
brilliants, "Wear diamonds; they show you are pros
perous." The motto of that generation, was "Always
live in a brownstone house, and your social position will
be assured."

The houses were not closed from May to October or
November, as those in fashionable localities are now.
The summer holidays usually began with July and ended
with August, and the people went no farther than Sara
toga, Long Branch, Lake George, Delaware Water Gap,
Richfield Springs, or Newport. A score of bathing-houses
and half-a-dozen refreshment saloons provided for the
few who drifted down to the solitary white beaches
of Rockaway and Coney Island. One steamer, sailing
once in six weeks, sufficed for all the cabin passengers
bound for the Mediterranean. Such a ship as the
Kaiserin Augusta Victoria or the Adriatic could have
easily accommodated more than all who went to Europe
in the busiest week in the height of the seaon. We were
rudimentary, not cosmopolitan, hardly metropolitan,
conscious of latent power and of a future, but mean
while quite satisfied with our achievements and progress,
conceited about them indeed, and ready to pooh-pooh
those visionaries who strove to increase the pace.

The ancient stages which rattled us between Fulton
Ferry, South Ferry, and Twenty-third Street did not
seem so very slow after all, though they took forty
minutes for each journey, and we did not complain,
though every minute of the forty put us through an
agonizing apprehension of dislocated bones. As we
landed at the ferry, a weedy, gray, melancholy old tout
hailed us.

"Right up Broadway! Right up Broadway!"

[63]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

I never heard him say more or less than that, and he
was always there — silent but for the monotony of his
cry, and lost in his inner depths. He was a veteran of the
Civil War. I imagined all the details of his life without
questioning him, or verifying them, and put him into a
story, imitatively Dickensian, which moved me, though
it may have drawn no tears from others. I pictured
him dying in his attic, wasted and forsaken, and mur
muring with his last breath as the celestial dawn opened,
66 Right up Broadway!"

Dickens led not me alone, but many older and more
experienced authors — Aldrich with his "Quite So," for ex
ample — in to pathos of that shallow and unconvincing sort.

Can the reader of the present time believe that in
those days there was but one respectable table d'hote
in all the town? — "Fanny's" in University Place, where
as we dined we said, "How like France!" though we had
never been in France then. Delmonico's stood at the
corner of Fourteenth Street and Fifth Avenue, with a
bit of a lawn in front of it, on which tables were set in
mild weather. English chop-houses, with sanded floors,
old prints, and Toby mugs, abounded — George Browne's
Green Room in the rear of old Wallack's Theatre, Far-
rish's in John Street, The De Soto in Bleecker Street,
and the Shakespeare Inn, which you entered through a
long, mysterious passage from Thirteenth Street. In
winter you could see behind every bar a steaming brass
or copper urn, its rim loaded with pulpy, baking apples.
Gone is the savour of the apple toddy, that odorous
brew in which you mixed bits of the hot fruit with
boiling water, sugar, and the fragrant spirit distilled from
orchards and matured in sherry casks. The scent of
the orchard in blossom, and a vision of all the country

[64]

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

in vernal loveliness, thrilled you as that nectar touched
your lips.

The theatrical profession had no clubs like The Lambs
and The Players. After the play the actors gathered
in the chop-houses, especially at Browne's, Browne
himself being a member of Wallack's company, a fat,
ruddy little Englishman who played no part truer than
that of host. The fitful wind of remembrance (I borrow
the significant phrase from F. B. Sanborn) has brushed
them all away into the limbo of phantoms — William
Davidge, Charles Fisher, John Gilbert, Harry Beckett,
Charles Leclerc, and John Brougham. A biographical
dictionary of the stage must be consulted if you want
to learn of their triumphs.

Wallack's was the theatre of triumphs, of the new
plays of H. J. Byron and T. W. Robertson, and of annual
revivals of the old comedies, Sheridan's, Goldsmith's,
Congreve's, Farquhar's, and Garrick's. Everybody of
note in town was present on "first nights," and every
body knew everybody else. Those celebrated occasions
had the aspect of family gatherings through the intimacy
of the audience with one another and with the actors
themselves. The actors played at the audience more
than they would be allowed to do now, and they were as
much welcomed for their personality as for their imper
sonations. Melodrama could seldom be seen on those
classic boards, yet it was at Wallack's that Dion Bouci-
cault gave the first performance of "The Shaugraun."
What a red-letter night that was — the house overflowing,
the interest and the merriment climbing and growing
till our limp, spent bodies ached!

"What have you got to say for yourself, Con?" the
stern, accusing priest asks that most delightful of vaga-

[65]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

bonds, and he, hanging his tousled head, confesses,
"Divil a word, your riverence. " So when we summoned
Boucicault before the curtain, bawling at him in our
transports, calling for a speech and for a long time mak
ing a speech impossible, he, clothed in the shreds and
patches of the part, responded in the sweet, endearing
brogue which he could never get rid of, though he be
lieved he left it behind him at the stage door, quoting
the same lines, and putting the audience in the place of
the priest and himself in the place of the culprit.

"Shun the theatre. It is the gate of hell!" a Puritani
cal aunt of mine used to warn me in my earlier boyhood.
If she could have looked into that sea of happy faces,
heard those peals of guileless laughter, and known how
such pleasures abate the rancours of this tough world
her fanaticism must have yielded.

It is not impossible that a supercilious youth of the
twentieth century, could he see us as we were in the
seventies, would think us discreditably behindhand and
say that he had no use for "hayseeds." We talked of
rapid transit less confidently than people talk now of
commercial aviation and of harnessing the winds and the
tides. Those who had been in London hoped that some
day we might have something like the old underground
railway of that city, and would have accounted it a boon
despite its general nastiness. A glimmer of what
the womb of the future might produce came from an
experimental length of a pneumatic line under Broadway
near the Astor House.

You went down a few stairs and entered from a plat
form a roomy, circular car, seated in which you and a
dozen other venturous passengers were drawn a hundred
yards or so, and then hauled back into the station.

MIDNIGHT OIL AND BEACH COMBING

It should have been thrilling: we expected to learn from
it the sensations of Zaza, "the human cannon-ball,"
at the moment her showman, Farini, fired her out of a
gun, which though suspiciously like a "quaker" was of
terrific calibre, as any gun must have been to receive
within its bore a plump young lady dressed in a spangled
bodice and pink tights. A puff, a flash, and out the
damsel shot, kissing her fingers as she rebounded in the
netting below the smoking muzzle. The velocity of
her emergence was so low that our suspense reacted in
a little disappointment. Our journey on the pneumatic
also ended tamely without justifying our agitated an
ticipations. It was too slow, too smooth, too easy.
We felt like the king of France marching up a hill and
down again, and we regretted the ten cents the experi
ment cost us. The pneumatic never got beyond the
experimental length, and was as dubious as the perform
ance of Zaza herself.

[67

IV
A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

A YOUTH matures in a newspaper office faster
than in any other profession, and he cannot
be there for a year or two, if he has sufficient
aptitude to lift himself above the routine of the stenog
rapher or the vagabondage of the cub reporter, without
acquiring and developing a certain prudence and pre
cision of expression and a capacity for fitting material to
any dimensions prescribed for it by those in authority.
He may have the desire of the moth for the star; a longing
to be literary, rather than journalistic; a longing to shape
his own style on the model of some favourite author,
or half a dozen favourite authors; a longing to drape
himself in all the ornaments of rhetoric and imagination,
and to give free rein to an individuality trying to find
itself; but these are liberties he dare not take while he
is subject to the spirit of impersonality and fixed stand
ards which dominate a serious newspaper.

That spirit imposes restraints which preachers and
lawyers can safely ignore: their arguments are not
impaired by the embellishments of rhetoric, or by the
excursions of an imagination which borrows images and
flowers of speech from earth and heaven, but if either
sermon or the appeal to the court were repeated in
the form of an editorial, word for word, as it was spoken,
eloquent as it might be, every other editor would think
that the editor who sanctioned it must have gone mad.

[68]

A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

The editorial must be logical, consistent, and, above all,
concise. Wit and satire in crisp phrases it may have,
the more the better; it must be lucid, direct, unambigu
ous, and undelayed by verbosity ; the art of it is in verbal
thrift, not in luxuriance of diction, and it must have the
appearance of completeness and finality, though very
likely the clock has struck and the measure been filled
while the writer of it has been only in the middle of the
matter he could have put into it but for the limitations
of space.

I never read the editorial pages of clean and responsi
ble newspapers without admiring the knowledge, the
unity of style, and the general excellence of craftsman
ship visible in the articles which, inevitably prepared
in a heat, give no signs of hurry. The homogeneity
of form is a wonder in itself. Though different hands are
employed they work in one fashion, and the whole page
has the effect of having been moulded by one man, whose
material might have been a liquid pouring out of one tap
and stopping automatically, after filling to the brim
vessels of various sizes and one label, without over
flowing or wasting a drop, Whether he is young or
old the individual disappears in the collective spirit of
"the paper," with the traditions and usages of which he
is obliged to conform whatever his idiosyncrasies may be.

" The paper ! " The staff speak of it as of omnipotence,
of something higher than anything else in the world,
and of a supernal power which requires on all occasions
instant obedience and complete self-effacement. They
coalesce in it like nebulae drawn into a planet.

So, if he is wise, the novice quickly falls into the groove
and fills his pint pot of paragraphs as neatly as he can
in the hope that by and by the larger measure may be

[69]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

granted to him. His sprigs of verse wither in an album;
the eagle wings of imagination that were to bear him
heavenward are clipped; he picks up his food, scraping
the ground which has no other recommendation than its
stability.

When my eyes were again able to front the sun after
a threatening blindness my oculist advised me against
going back to night work, and I declared my intention
of trying the career of a free lance, that is, of writing
books and articles for the magazines, and living on what
I could earn in that way. I remember as though I had
seen it yesterday the dubiety which creased Doctor
Holland's brow when I told him. Who knows that
name now? The mention of it hardly stirs an echo.
Do the books it was attached to sell now? or are they
only to be found on the back shelves of libraries, and
in the old homesteads which received them with eager
ness and delight as they came out in editions of thou
sands? Nobody looked puzzled then if you spoke of
J. G. Holland or of " Timothy Titcomb, " his pseudonym;
they were names on every lip, not less celebrated than
Cooper's, Dickens's, Thackeray's or Josh Billings's,
and more familiar than Mark Twain's, for he had not yet
persuaded us that it was necessary for us to laugh every
time he poked us in the ribs. Very proper were the books
which bore them, full of sugar-coated precepts, not un
suitable for Sunday reading, nor acid in their moralities,
which did not hide the face of God in a mask of scowls,
but revealed it in the smiles of genuine humour. In
some ways they reflected the appearance of the
author, a tall, distinguished, magisterial man of as much
suavity as dignity, who took a parental interest in all
the young people he met, so true indeed an interest in

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A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

those who were nearest to him that he admitted them to
all the advantages of partnership in the magazine he had
founded, the first Scribner's Monthly, which is now
the Century.

"But it is impossible to live by magazine work alone,
my dear boy. There is not a man in America who is
doing it, or who can do it. There are not enough maga
zines. We all have to depend on private means, or on
the salary of some regular position. Go back to the
Tribune or some other newspaper. Then you will be
able to pay your way, and escape temptation, the horrors
of debt, and all the misery of uncertainty, yes, and of
destitution. They will wreck you, take my word for it,
if you persist in your present intention."

He meant well, but I was foolhardy, and I did not
shiver or throw up my hands under the cold water of
his advice.

A young fellow, eager, slight, nervous, and endearing,
with dark, deep, swimming eyes, sat on the other side
of the desk and while he listened to his chief threw sym
pathetic glances at me. I never saw gentler eyes than
those were: their glow was enveloping, it warmed by the
courage and the inspiration it communicated. That
was Richard Watson Gilder, the assistant editor, and
as he saw me to the door he clasped my hand, and whis
pered, "Try us with something. I hope you will hit
us right in the bull's-eye."

I did hit them in the bull's-eye almost immediately
afterward and often again, if mere acceptance is to
be reckoned as marksmanship, during all the years of
my adventures as a "beach comber," not now of para
graphs and slender columns, but of serviceable material
for magazines.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

The flood of low-priced periodicals which now tides
many a not quite seaworthy craft — some privateers
also — over the shallows, had not risen. Respectability
in the Victorian sense of starch prevailed. We handled
everything with kid gloves, though our coats might
be shabby and our linen frayed, and we shaped our lips
to "prunes," "prisms," and "propriety." We might
be dull, but dulness was more excusable than vulgarity.
We worked not with the axe on giant trees, making the
splinters fly and our muscles bulge, but whittled and
pared with pocket knives. Originality was not en
couraged. The rake of the "muck-raker," the language
of the Bowery and the frontier, the stories flung out of
a red heat, without thought of their consequences on
domestic proprieties and on the sensibilities of polite
society, stories scornful of syntax and orderliness of
dress, did not profane the unsullied pages of those
unsophisticated days. No doubt there were slimy
places at our very doors, but we shut our eyes to them
or hoodwinked them, and let the scavenger attend to
them out of our sight and out of the reach of our nostrils.
"Not in the New York Ledger!"

When Robert Bonner once threw a story back to its
author and was asked why he rejected it he replied,
"Because cousins marry in it."

"But don't cousins marry in real life, Mr. Bonner?"
"That may be, but never in the New York Ledger."
That illustrates the primness which circumscribed us.
Hardy, Wells, and Eden Phillpotts had not cleared the
horizon. The off-hand colloquialism which began with
Kipling and runs riot in his imitators was not permitted.
The standard which shackled us was that of a straight-
laced mother, who, having morality as the first consider-

[72]

RICHARD WATSON GILDER

A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

ation, becomes after that solicitous for a style of ambling
ease, unimpeded by any complexities of thought or
phrase which might delay the "instruction and the
entertainment" — thus she combined the words — of
the dear children.

My first article in Harper's was on "Jack Ashore."
It exposed the wrongs of the most defenceless people
in the world, but it could scarcely have been classed
as "muck-raking."

How antiquated they look, those magazines of the
early seventies with all their decorum, their sober
articles on science and travel, and their funny little
wood-engravings! The cherubs who blow bubbles on
the old cover of Harper's Monthly were already middle-
aged and should have had some clothing to save the
readers' blushes. The same editor sits now in the same
chair in the same cubical that he occupied when I climbed
the spiral stairway to the editorial rooms to see him then.
He celebrated his seventieth birthday five years ago,
and soon afterward he — Henry Mills Alden — wrote
to me: "The world goes well with me — better than I
ever hoped. I could only wish for you or for any other
friend, that his satisfaction with earthly life be as full
as mine." A dreamer and a mystic, he would rather
talk to you of metaphysics than of manuscripts; a born
philosopher, diverted by the pressure of circumstances
from the lore he preferred, he would for choice expound
in a low voice the Eleusinian mysteries with his head
wreathed in smoke from his pipe rather than hasten
to dispel your mystery as to the fate of the contribution
you had submitted to him last week or the week before.
He was very patient with his young contributors, very
eager for their success, and when he was compelled to

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

hand a manuscript back to any of them I am sure it
wrung him. He had been through the mill, and he told
me of an experience he had had with Guernsey, his
predecessor.

"Yes, we'll take it," Guernsey had said of a page-
long poem which Alden had offered, and forthwith
Guernsey, had filled a voucher and passed it on to him.
It was a thrifty, porridge-eating time in literature for
both editors and authors, and though Alden had not
expected much the figures on the voucher were smaller.

" Why, Alden, you look disappointed."

"I am — a little."

"What did you expect?"

"Well, I thought it might be worth ten dollars."

The sum called for by the voucher was five.

"Very well; we want to be generous. We'll split
the difference and make it seven fifty."

If a poem equal in merit to that were offered to him
to-day, I venture to say Alden would pay at least fifty
and perhaps a hundred for it. The wages of prose and
verse have improved.

Faces and methods have changed, but I believe
the old Harper building, like Alden's sanctum, is just
the same now as it was then. Then the founders of the
house were alive, a remarkable family of strong, whole
some, conservative, and efficient-looking men of a solid
English type that has become almost, if not quite, extinct
in the modern business world. A friend of mine who was
associated with them for many years described to me
the examination he passed when he applied for employ
ment in a literary capacity. His testimonials having
been scrutinized, he was questioned as to his habits.

"You smoke?"

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A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

"Very little."

"You drink?"

"Only in moderation."

"You gamble?"

"Never."

"Come, come! Then what is your vice? Every
man must have one. Out with it!"

Galahad himself would have been cornered in such an
interrogation.

They were hospitable, too, in an old-fashioned way,
and from the bustle of the publishing floor, stacked to
the ceiling with books and papers, resonant under the
wheels of trucks and the tramp of employees, they used
to take their friends, customers, and favourite authors
into an inner room of quiet luxury, decorated by the
artists of their staff, and offer them the choice of various
decanters.

Only malfeasance or inefficiency dislodged a man from
his berth. The old cashier, Demorest, had been there
time out of mind — a gruff old fellow, who glared from
behind his grille, and paid out money grudgingly, as
though it were being thrown away. I took my vouchers
to him in dread of that damning, transfixing glance of
his, which implied that while literature might be all
right as a manufactured product, the creatures who
produced it were as leeches boring into the props and
drawing the sap out of the foundations of the business.

When the amount called for was fifty dollars he made
me feel that it was unconscionable; when it increased
to a hundred he held the voucher at close range and
distant, incredible at both, and examined it for what
seemed to be an hour, examined it and re-examined it,
screwing his eyes at me and it bitterly; and when, one

[75]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

happy and memorable day, the amount for a special ser
vice rose to two hundred dollars, his disapprobation over
whelmed both of us. He held the slip of paper first
at arm's length, then brushed it against his nose; groaned,
leaned back in his stool, slowly opened the receipt book
and noisily closed it, and before he suspiciously handed
out the money came from behind the grille and surveyed
me from head to foot, snorting as he did so, with the effect
of making me half believe that in some way I had per
petrated a fraud. But it was better to risk that blood
hound of the treasury, growling and straining his leash,
than to return down the iron stairway, ascended buoyantly,
descended with heavy feet, a heavy heart, and pocket
bulging with a rejected manuscript instead of dollars.

Those descents sometimes reminded me of a night
mare of my childhood. A Calvinistic nurse had pictured
for me the place all bad boys go to. It was down a wide,
dark stairway, and as you went deeper and deeper with
trembling legs, wishing to run back but quite unable to
do it, you grew warmer and warmer, hotter and hotter,
until you were bathed in perspiration. Then a smell
of sulphur stifled you, and the red reflections of an enor
mous fire stained the walls, the ceiling, and the steps
you were treading on. A few steps more, and you,
struggling and shrieking, reached the biggest kitchen you
had ever seen, and a gleeful imp sprang at you and pushed
you against the prongs of a fork held by a huge creature
resembling a scarlet goat, who dropped you on a broiler
and grilled you while the imp danced and laughed,
until you were sure you were very much overdone.
And he cooked you and cooked and cooked you as a real
cook does a chop or a steak when she is talking to the
grocer's boy or the policeman.

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A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

The same nurse once touched my bare finger with a
lighted match, and begged me to remember how very
painful flames all over the body must be if so slight a
scorch as that could hurt so much. By this time, and
by her own experience, she has probably proved, for weal
or woe, her little experiment on me.

You could have counted on the fingers of one hand
all the periodicals in New York that paid a living wage.
They were Harper's, Scribner's Monthly, Appleton's
Journal, Hearth and Home, and the Galaxy., which, un-
illustrated, was in a literary way the most brilliant of
them all. I can praise the Galaxy, and my old friends,
its editors, Colonel William Church and John Lillie,
without fearing reproach or challenge, since I never
burdened them with a line.

Appleton's was a neat, dignified small quarto, full of
pleasant little essays, edited by Oliver Bell Bunce,
the literary adviser of the publishers, to whom he sug
gested many highly successful books, among them
"Picturesque America" and "Picturesque Europe,"
which, lying under the family Bible, or near it, still
adorn, I suppose, not a few musty chromo-hung and horse-
haired country parlours.

Your first meeting with him was likely to be as terri
fying as the bark of Demorest. A lean, stooping, gray-
visaged man, intellectual looking, spruce in attire, quick
in movement, imperious in manner, he disconcerted
you by the flash of his eyes, and then dashed your manu
script on the desk before him, flattening it with resound
ing blows of both hands if it were rolled, hunching his
shoulders, and working his mouth as a dog does while
he stiffens himself for an attack. But there was no
bite to Bunce. All those menacing demonstrations were

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

but a necessary defence against the impulses which,
unguarded, would have embarrassed him through too
many indiscretions of sympathy and generosity. He
had the tenderest of hearts under that alarming de
meanour, as you were likely to discover before even your
first meeting with him ended.

I do not mean that he subsided into the purring sort
of man, into blandishments and oily acquiescences.
He was always positive and gesticulatory, full of affirma
tions and postulates, of views taken at a tangent and
often taken merely to provoke discussion. He liked
to argue on art and literature, starting invariably with
an emphatic "I affirm," and what he affirmed was so
different from the opinions of others that conversation
with him never missed being breezy; sometimes it whirled
in the vortex of a tempest.

Some of his affirmations were gatnered in a book of
his called "Bachelor Bluff." His language, whether
spoken or written, was as vigorous and stimulating as
his ideas were original. Frequently you might not agree
with him, but you were never disinclined to listen to
the dogmas and paradoxes he peppered you with from
his rapid-fire battery. Like most of us, he had sup
pressed his ambitions, which had budded at the outset
in a five-act tragedy, and losing his hold on the skirts
of the classic mantle — what a slippery robe it is ! — had
resigned himself undaunted to the thorns of the editorial
chair and the small satisfactions of the book-making.
His greatest success, measured by circulation, was a little
volume of "Don'ts," a manual of social and moral pro
hibitions, which had a vogue equal to that of "Helen's
Babies" or "Wee Macgregor," and for a long time the
title endured as a^ popular catchword, like Punch's

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"don't" to people about to marry. The trivialities of
which we are not proud often enough please the public
taste much better than our finer, loftier efforts.

Every Sunday evening he and Mrs. Bunce, assisted
by their clever and pretty daughters, opened their house
in Twenty-first Street for a late supper, and hither
came artists and authors, big and little, those who had
won their spurs, and those who were unmounted and
uncommissioned. Young painters who had been forced
to abandon their dreams of glorious canvases hung
on the line at the Salon, for the sake of the bread and
cheese procurable by illustrations, and young authors
who, humbly paying their way by fifteen and twenty
dollar articles on cabbages, chimney-sweeps, organ-
grinders, and marionettes, had jn their heads the ferment
of epics, novels, and plays, were as welcome in that
generous house as any of the celebrities who were con
stantly present. As I recall those boys and the sacri
fice of their desires and perhaps of their natural abilities,
a protest clamours for utterance. Oh, the inexorable
"pressure of circumstances!" How* it binds and suffo
cates! How it retards, cripples, and humiliates the
youth of the twin professions and makes artisans of them
instead of artists!

If I mention some of the celebrities who were there,
it is probable that their names will be meaningless and
the reason of their distinction unperceived by readers
under fifty. Who were the two Gary sisters? I may be
asked. Who were Richard Henry Stoddard, Arthur
Quartley, Swain Gifford, F. E. Church, Walter Shirlaw,
Charles Warren Stoddard, Edgar Fawcett, Albert Falvey
Webster, William Henry Bishop, and Frederick Diel-
man? Only a few like Stedman, Winslow Homer,

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Thomas Moran, and E. A. Abbey are recalled without
a dip into reference books; the front sheet of the roll is
visible while it is held in place by a clasp; those below
have sprung back out of sight and it is a dusty job to
haul them down again.

I, like cleverer men, yielded to that irresistible pressure.
Could I have chosen I would have given all my time to
the writing of stories, novels, and plays, to purely lit
erary effort, but I was in need of immediate returns.
The fiction of a beginner is always a speculative and
hazardous offering in the market; I could not do without
an assured income. The cost of my ransom from the
dragon was the renunciation of the imagination, except
as a game of solitaire in leisure hours, in hours stolen
from sleep. What I had learned during my apprentice
ship under Mr. Bowles and in the Tribune office now
put me on my feet. I had acquired the journalistic
knack of writing evenly, discreetly, and without slopping
over; of cutting and fitting to measurements like a
carpenter, a tailor, or a shoemaker; of always being
passable, in a workman-like Way, if nothing more. I
could be trusted with commissions. All I had to do was
to find subjects which the editors approved of, and no
questions followed as to my ability to turn out the given
number of words — five thousand or six thousand —
with the "neatness and despatch" appealing from shop
windows. I was fertile in subjects, and that was as
important to success as the precision and the sim
plicity of style which I fell into. The ability to dovetail
words and sentences in lucid paragraphs and pages is
not enough in itself. You must also be able to hit on
topics which your editor has not already done, which
accord with his policy, which he believes will suit his

[80]

A HANDY MAN AT LITERATURE

public. He counts on you for that, and I think it is a
natural gift, an individual instinct, one of the few things
which cannot be taught or learned.

Many years later when I had become an editor I
proposed a subject to Sir Edwin Arnold which I con
fessed to him seemed to be out of his line, and as he
accepted it he sighed, "I am ashamed to say that after
all my years in the office of the Daily Telegraph I can
write on any subject offered to me."

My own range, not so universal as his, nor exploited
with his erudition or depicted with his vividness, com
prised a superficial area absurdly disproportionate to
the depth of its shallow soil. It covered town and
country, slums and the resorts of fashion, art and
industry, the sea and navies, attics and housetops, the
medical profession, and cowboys; it extended from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, for much of it was topographi
cal: an isthmus of it opened a way to England and the
Continent. While I was in, the midst of it Richard Henry
Stoddard, finer as a poet than judicious as a critic, play
fully dubbed me the "Briareus of the Press" — the
Titan of the fifty heads and the hundred hands. If
he meant that, it was a far-fetched compliment. Though
it smeared the lips with honey, it recalled the sting of
Tennyson's fling at Bulwer Lytton. Not an interesting
monstrosity like Briareus, I was but a filler of bottles
from a tap of constant supply.

All the while cravings for higher things were mur
muring and beating against the bars of the cage, and
sometimes they got half way out into the sunlight and
struggled to be free. Imagination rebels against renun
ciation; you may renounce it, but it will not abide by
any contract you make for it. Why repine? "Who

[81]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

hath despised the day of small things?" The freedom
of the woods offers no shelter from the hardships of
the weather, and dreams may lose their charm if they
are transmuted into actualities; they are not meant for
earth, and substantiated they may be as difficult as an
angel would find her wings every time she was asked to
"step lively, "or "move up in front, "in an overcrowded
street car.

The pleasantest incidents in the work were the jour
neys made in company with the illustrators of the
articles — with E. A. Abbey, C. S. Reirihart, Howard
Pyle, Granville Perkins, E. H. Garrett, and Harry
Fenn. We were light-hearted boys then, and while our
spirits were high enough under ordinary circumstances,
any mishap or particular hardship, hunger, fatigue, the
loss of sleep, or strange bedfellows at once raised them.
Everybody predicted fame for Abbey, for he had already
shown his genius in his illustrations of "The Quiet Life"
and "Old Songs." Humour sparkled in his dark eyes;
he scorned convention. There was something elfish in
him. You might be walking and talking with him, the
"Ab," of those days, and suddenly to your amazement
and the amazement of any one else in sight, he would
drop you to dance a double shuffle in the middle of the
road, with all the confident flourishes of a stage darkey.
And when he has been amused I have seen him roll off
his feet in uncontrollable laughter, and bury his head
in the cushions of a chair or sofa, while his plump little
'body rocked and heaved. A Royal Academician now,
he was authorized to paint the picture of the coronation
of King Edward, who, like Queen Alexandra, became
one of his admirers. As the sittings progressed, the
King praised this and that, and seemed to be particularly

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A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

pleased with the conspicuousness of one of his royal
legs among all the details of that gorgeous pageant.
The other leg was hidden by his robes and the robes of
prelates and peers.

"Splendid, Abbey!" said His Majesty, "and do you
know? I think you had better show both legs. Then
it will be perfect."

Who could have been so churlish as to flout the wish
of so amiable a monarch as King Edward? Not Abbey,
and though that apparently trifling change involved
many others, he, of course, consented.

A city's water front abounds with material for pictures
and descriptions, and I had often been attracted by the
mixture of domestic life and commerce to be observed
among the fleets of canal boats moored at Whitehall.
Abbey and I decided on a trip in one of them, and spent
two weeks in her, gliding up the Hudson and through
the canal in the most restful and beguiling way. She
was unprepared for passengers, but, fully content, we
shared the hutch of her captain and his daughter — a
very nice girl, by the way — under the tiller, and broke
the journey and picked strawberries at their home, a
comfortable, prosperous farm house on the very banks
of the canal at Oneida. Afterward the Tile Club fol
lowed our example, and received the credit for the revival
of an outgrown means of transit which properly belonged
to us.

The "canallers" are better than the reputation they
have with those who do not know them. Their boats
are often their only homes, and their families are born
and reared in them. A boat comes along with a hard-
worked woman in a rocking-chair at the stern, a wild
lily in a tumbler of water on a common box, which

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

serves as a work table; and, in an enclosure of rope and
wood, like a sheep pen, on the cabin roof, children
are playing, and we see a young woman pressing a tame
robin to her breast, and feeding it at the end of her
finger. Hour after hour we glide as if through air, with
less perceptible motion than even the flutter of wings,
and all the beauty of the valley of the Mohawk is silently
opened before us. As the stars gleam out, myriads of
fireflies emulate them, and flash across the oily surface
of the stream. Each boat carries a brilliant lantern in
the bow, which disperses a circle of yellow light on the
watery track ahead. The tow-lines dip occasionally
with a musical thrill, and you hear the steady thud of
the horses' hoofs on the ground, or the low cry of the
driver as he urges them forward. At the stern the helms
man sings till a lock engages him. His voice then deep
ens. "Lock be-1-o-o-w!" he calls to his mate; "ste-a-dy,
ste-a-dy!" to the driver. There is a momentary clatter
of feet upon the deck; we rise smoothly to the new level;
the lock lights fade; and we are travelling softly toward
the amber morning.

Howard Pyle and I drove over the old national pike
from Frederick, Maryland, to West Virginia, which a
century ago was the great highway of coaches, wagons,
and horsemen between the East and West. It was the
route of Jackson, Clay, Harrison, Taylor, Polk, Calhoun,
Davy Crockett, and other celebrities, to Baltimore and
Washington. An octogenarian told us that he had seen
Clay thrown from a coach into a heap of soft limestone
near the Pennsylvania border. Clay was very witty
and very courteous. "He bowed to everybody who
bowed to him." As soon as he recovered from the
shock he relighted his cigar, and smiled. "This, gentle-

[84]

A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

men," he said, bowing to the onlookers, "is indeed a
case of mixing the Clay of Kentucky with the lime
stone of Pennsylvania."

There were sixteen gayly painted coaches each way
a day; the cattle and sheep were never out of sight;
the canvas-covered wagons were drawn by six or twelve
horses with boVs of bells over their collars; some families
went by in private vehicles; and while most of the
travellers were unostentatious, a few had splendid
equipages, and employed outriders. Some of the passes
through the Alleghanies are nearly as precipitous as the
Sierra Nevada. Within a mile of the road the country
was a wilderness.

When Pyle and I drove over the pike thirty-three
years ago blacksnakes, moccasins, and copperheads
had grown so unused to the sight of man that they lay
in the sun unconcerned while we passed. The old
taverns were crumbling, the old villages around the
taverns were asleep. The pervading scent of pines
seems to still cling to my clothes, and I remember the
voices of whip-poor-wills, owls, and catamounts which
shivered through the air as night fell in purple and gold
upon the endless ridges and peaks of the Alleghanies,
and sank the gorges into unfathomable pits, one of which
is called the Shades of Death. I remember, too, the pretty
maid at the old toll-house, who had no change for the
coin we gave her, and who went calling across the pas
ture, "Oh, mother! Oh, mother!" so loudly that all
the mountains picked it up and bleated, "Oh, mother!
Oh, mother!" as from a nursery swarming with infant
Titans.

The fee I received for one of those outings was less than
I had looked for, but the editor did not offer, as in Al-

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

den's case, to "split the difference" between my ex
pectations and his estimate of value. All he said was,
"Why, after all that pleasure we ought not to pay you
anything. You ought to pay us for giving you such an
opportunity." I did not see it in that way then, but
could I repeat those journeys in the same company
and in the same joyous spirits, I would not hesitate to
put my hand into my pocket a's deeply and as readily
as it would go.

At the end of ten years of free-lancing I had over
stocked the market, the inevitable consequence which
Doctor Holland had foreseen when there was only one
periodical to every twelve or more which exist now.
Harper' shad accepted between forty and fifty long articles
of mine, and Scribner's Monthly and the Century nearly
as many. Some months I had taken the leading place
in four magazines at once, and yet with all my industry
and versatility — I can claim those merits — I had not
been able at the best to make more than between fifteen
hundred and two thousand dollars in any one year. What
was I to do now? I did not care to return to daily
journalism. The "pressure of circumstances " was tight
ening on me again. I was glumly smoking and wool
gathering on a raw, gray February morning in lodgings
opposite the Astor Library — in one of those austere,
granite, colonnaded houses under the porticoes of which
the ancient stoics might have gathered in the intangible
armour of their philosophy. The fire in the grate would
not burn, sleet and snow were strumming against the
windows. Nothing would go. It was a morning of
restlessness, perplexities, and forebodings. I picked up
books, letters, and papers, glanced at them and dropped
them. Then a stranger knocked at my door.

[86]

A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

This may sound like the slow music of a melodrama;
it may look like a stage scene carefully devised for its
effect on the reader's sentiment. Every detail is true,
except that before knocking on my door the stranger
had sent up his card, which bore a name I did not know.
It was Providence personified in a well-dressed, polite
young man from Boston.

Providence has many disguises, and is often belated,
but how often in life she steps in at the eleventh hour
and saves the situation by providing bread for the starv
ing and a rescuing hand for the drowning! Every re
source is at an end, and we resign ourselves to fate;
not a crumb remains and hardly a breath; the fifty-
eighth minute is on the edge of the fifty-ninth; the cur
tain is shutting down on the last ray of light, when this
angel of compassion appears and restores us. I think
that those of us who have endured the stings and arrows
of misfortune, in the tight and bristling corners some of
us know, can all recall some moment of crisis when the
strangling hag of despair has had us at our last gasp,
and Providence has intervened with saving grace, and
left us in such bewilderment over our salvation that we
have not had a voice to thank her, nor fully compre
hended the miracle until it has loomed in retrospect
from the distance of years.

"Would I come on to Boston and see Mr. Ford?"
That was what the messenger said. I had been a con
tributor to the Youth's Companion since my seventeenth
year, and already knew Mr. Ford well, a man of the
kindliest nature and the highest principles. He had
acquired the Companion while it was a very small and
very restricted thing, and was making it by leaps and
bounds what it has been ever since — an educative power

[87]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

over children and adults in American families. When
I had submitted my boyish essays to him he had read
them in the most obliging way, while I waited. I used
to watch his hands anxiously as he read. If, as he neared
the last sheet, he passed the manuscript from right to
left I knew it was to be accepted, for then the right
would reach into his waistcoat pocket and fetch out
five dollars for me.

Within twenty-four hours of that knock on my door
I went to Boston and became a member of his staff,
beginning at once the service which has lasted thirty
years, and which I hope has been as useful to the pro
prietors as it has been pleasant to me.

A few years later I met Allan Thorndike Rice, who had
recently bought the North American Review for a song.
A man of means, birth, culture, and high ambition, he
had happened to call, by chance, on the late James R.
Osgood, who was publishing the Review in Boston.

"Why don't you buy it?" Osgood had said to him,
jokingly as he thought, when Rice spoke of his literary
aspirations.

"The Review? Is the Review for sale? Let me think
it over."

"There's no time to think it over. We shall not issue
another number. Unless you take hold to-day it will
expire to-morrow."

For a few thousand dollars Mr. Rice had purchased
it and, investing a part of his ample wealth in it, had
resuscitated it with brilliant results. He was new
at editorship, but adaptable and fertile in ideas, and
intimate with many distinguished people, statesmen
diplomats, and others, who were serviceable to him.
Lawrence Oliphant, whose talents verged on genius,

[881

A HANDY MAN OF LITERATURE

also lent a hand in writing for him and in procuring
foreign contributors. There are not many stories in
literature sadder or less explicable than poor Oliphant's.
He was well connected, a gentleman and a scholar, a
favourite in society, whose books, like his conversation,
sparkled with wit and dewy freshness — "AltioraPeto,"
for example. An idealist, too, and soon afterward, to
everybody's amazement, he fell under the thrall of a
religio-socialistic experiment in California; burned all
his ships behind him; surrendered his identity and what
property he had to the phalanstery; ceased to com
municate with his former friends, and was seen peddling
fruit in San Francisco.

Allan Thorndike Rice also was an unusually fascinating
man to those for whom he cared, very handsome, intel
lectual, and genial and confiding, if he were drawn to you.

I called on him in a dudgeon to see why he had not
answered a letter of mine, sent weeks before in which I
had proposed an article for the Review. He received
me with so much apologetic cordiality that my pique
at his previous dilatoriness disappeared in the instant.

"Of course I want that article. How soon can you
let me have it?" he said, adding, "And I want you."

That was another surprise, and we talked it over at
one of the luncheons he was always giving at Delmonico's.
He had just been appointed minister extraordinary and
envoy plenipotentiary to St. Petersburg, and he made a
contract with me to take editorial charge of the Review
during his absence, subject, of course, to his direction
and supervision from that difficult distance, and without
breaking or modifying my entirely agreeable relations
with Mr. Ford, in Boston. All his preparations were
made; final instructions were given; he left the office

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

with me one evening and after we had dined together
he said in his kindly way, as we parted: 'You look
tired. Go to bed early. Here is a prescription for some
thing my doctor gave me which will make you sleep."

He never returned to the office. A day or two before
the day fixed for his departure he died in the prime of
life at the very threshold of a career which, had he not
been cut off so ruthlessly and unnecessarily, would
undoubtedly have carried him to enduring eminence.

The property passed to his friend, Lloyd Bryce, and
under him I served the Review for eight years, most of
the time as managing editor, and, toward the close,
when my double burden was breaking me down, as
associate editor. I shrink from boasting, and, like many
another editor, I have always been content to work be
hind a screen, but some of the things I achieved for
the Review are of more than personal interest, as, for
example, the discussion I arranged between Mr. Glad
stone, Cardinal Manning, and Robert Ingersoll on the
subject of Faith, and the later controversy on Home Rule
in which I entangled, not without a little strategy —
and perhaps I ought to be ashamed of it — Mr. Glad
stone, while he was prime minister, with Mr. Balfour,
the late Duke of Argyll, and other f oemen worthy of his
steel. Of those tournaments I may give fuller detail
farther on.

90 J

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

f "THIRTY-FIVE years ago all of us who gathered
at Oscar's, opposite the old Academy of Design,

JL. in Fourth Avenue, were struggling in literature
or art. It was a quiet and decent place, and other cus
tomers left us to ourselves. Each of us had his own seat
at the round-table, and there we sat good-humouredly,
in clouds of the "infinite tobacco," which Carlyle at
tributed to Tennyson, with much chaff blowing between
us, the flapping of the wings of ambitions that began
better than they ended, and a sufficiency of reciprocal
admiration, saved by ridicule before it could cloy or
spoil. We all thought we were doing or going to do sur
passing things which would make the world hold its
breath. We were boyishly extravagant and inflated,
and, as the doors closed on us, Olympian.

For us they closed till the next night. We were never
there in the daytime. To us Oscar's was like Thackeray's
"Back Kitchen" or his "Haunt," which vanished at
the approach of daybreak — the door, the house, the
bar, the waiter, Oscar himself, and all. One obligation
remained, however, and that required one of us to see

Jack M home. He was the incorrigible, unescapable

dependent of the fraternity, a handsome young poet
from Belfast. He could write well enough to be accepted
by the Century and Harper's, but he was hopelessly in
dolent and unconscionable. Perhaps some of his verses

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

linger in the anthologies; the best of them ought not to
disappear. Few are left who remember him at all, or,
I might say, who remember any of us. Exasperating
as he was, a later and smaller Villon, a lesser Burns,
another Savage, or a Branwell Bronte, wanton and
beyond redemption, we put up with him for his talents
and his smile, vowing time and again that we would
have no more of him, and then, after a momentary cool
ness, restoring him to his old footing. We used all our
ingenuity and persuasion to keep him at work, which
might easily have been done; we got "jobs" for him ,
commissions for stories, articles, and verse, but it was
in vain.

The late W. M. Laffan, a struggler like the rest of
us then, not the magnate he became as a colleague
of Mr. Morgan and editor of the Sun, succeeded when
the rest of us had failed, by a strategem of Hebraic
ruthlessness.

He called on him at his dingy lodgings early in the
morning, knowing that the sluggard would still be abed.

"I've got a job for you, Jack, and see here! you are
not going to leave this room, my boy, till it's finished."

He explained what it was, and, after seeing that pen,
paper, and ink were on the table, walked off with the
poet's only pair of trousers under his arm. In the even
ing he came back and, receiving the manuscript, returned
the trousers, coercion triumphing when no other form of
compulsion would have availed.

I am reminded of a story that used to be told by
Richard Watson Gilder. When the old Scribner's
Monthly was started, somewhere near Bleecker Street
and Broadway, and he was its assistant editor, Frank
R. Stockton, not yet celebrated by the "Rudder Grange"

[92]

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

stories, had a subordinate place in the same office. They
sat, I think, face to face. Gilder had just written some
verses on the hardships of the poet's lot, the refrain of
which was, "What the poet wants is bread," and with the
excusable vanity of youth he turned eagerly to the news
papers every morning to see how often it had been quoted
and what had been said of it. He saw Stockton watching
him one day in that detached, disinterested, almost
lugubrious way of his which might melt into a smile but
rarely if ever got as far in levity as laughter. The gravity
of the humourist's manner, whether it is deliberate and
methodical or temperamental and unconscious, serves
his purpose well. It has the effect of the low light which
prepares the stage for the effulgence of the transformation
scene. Bret Harte often spoiled his stories as he told
them in his lectures and conversation by laughing him
self, before his audiences had time to. Stockton could
hold himself as an image of conventual austerity during
the mirth he communicated to his listeners; in the height
of it he sat impassive or with a no more explicit betrayal
of emotion than a look of mild surprise. He did not
even chuckle or gurgle as Mark Twain did.

Gilder found what he was looking for. There was the
poem, and, as I daresay other young poets do as often
as their verses turn up, he read it once more. Was it not
Samuel Rogers who said that he never met Wordsworth
in a friend's library that he was not looking into one
of his own works?

Gilder discovered what he thought was a misprint.
"What the poet wants is bread" had become "What
the poet wants is cheese," at the end of every stanza.
He had to laugh and call Stockton's attention to it, but
Stockton did not seem to see the fun of it. A closer

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

examination showed that "bread" had been cut out
and "cheese," neatly done with a pen in close imitation
of the type, gummed in — by the apparently guileless
Stockton, of course.

This has nothing to do with "Jack" except that bread
alone did not satisfy him, and he would leave us when
ever he could procure cheese elsewhere. He pressed
me for a loan late one afternoon when my purse was
empty, as it often was in those days.

"You could get it," he said reproachfully, with un
limited assurance and impudence, in answer to my ex
planation. His need was more than ordinary; he was
in the sorest straits; unless he could get some money
instantly disaster must crush him, and I would be
responsible. There was no doubt about that — I would
be the delinquent. He convinced me that I was hard
hearted, and made me ashamed of myself, and at last
wheedled my watch out of my pocket and disappeared
with it in the direction of the nearest pawnbroker, where
I recovered it the next day.

That evening I changed my usual restaurant for
another, which was seldom visited by us, and there I
discovered the rogue and the reason of his exigency.
There he was in the highest spirits, as glossy and viva
cious as he could be, with a bleached and bedecked
Light o' Love, displaying her charms and giggling,
opposite to him, and between them, instead of the rasping
vin ordinaire of the place, a bottle of the Amontillado,
which I liked but could seldom afford.

Another night Edgar Fawcett and I were parting from
him in Union Square, a cold, drizzling night, when the
wind whistled round the corners and the pelting rain
made us turn up the collars of our overcoats. He was

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A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

out of sorts and doleful. What was the matter? He
paused before a letter box, and drew out of a pocket
a bundle of letters ready for the post. They were to
his friends at home, he explained, the last letters he would
ever write, for he had resolved to take Time by the fore
lock and defy Fate, the Fate that had tortured him all his
days, and we might take what comfort we could in the
knowledge that in one of them to a relative who would
see to it were full particulars of every dollar he owed to
us and to others. All should be repaid, and he relieved
from the burden of life. Not expecting him to carry
out his threat, we chaffed him as we left him, and sepa
rated to go home. But the memory of some verses he
had written on suicide in the Century, verses of dramatic
power, haunted me. I could not eat my dinner, and
leaving it unfinished I hurried out into the streets to
see Fawcett at the house of his sister, Mrs. de Coppet,
in West Seventeenth Street. Fawcett, too, gave up his
dinner, and through the storm we made haste to Jack's
lodgings. He was not there, and had not been. I
pictured him — Jack, with his ready laughter and affec
tionate ways; Jack of songs and stories; Jack, miracu
lously transfigured, his faults wiped out, his merits
shining — I pictured him dragging down the length of
a dark and slippery pier and there escaping all his per
plexities by flinging himself into the rushing tide. We
searched all his haunts for him. They had not seen him
since yesterday, and Fawcett's unbelief yielded slowly
to my conviction.

At about nine o'clock, wet and dispirited, we looked
into one of the little French restaurants that then
clustered in Greene and Bleecker Streets — was it the
Restaurant du Grand Vatel, magnificent in nothing

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

but its name, or the more modest Taverne Alsacienne,
where the dinner of five courses, vin compris, cost thirty-
five cents? There we discovered him, debonair as
ever, ending his repast with a pousse-cafe, and reading
a soiled copy of " Suicide " to a group of admirers in a
corner. Our "pious feelings" had been played on, and
we were as mad as the bull in Hardy's story. No sin
of the Decalogue is so unforgivable as an advantage
taken of one's sensibilities: that somehow pricks our
vanity; the noblest part of us is duped and humiliated
and turned to gall. When we had expressed our opin
ion of him he turned a front of sheepish innocence to
ward us. "You seem to be disappointed — you seem
to be in a hurry," he complained. "Wait. If you wait,
you'll see."

After a parley we induced him to come with us, and
saw him to his lodgings. He lit the flickering gas, and
threw himself on the bed. He picked up a razor from
the dressing table.

"Do it," said Fawcett in a provocative voice, cruel
and callous it seemed to me in my horror, a voice pro
vocative and instigatory. I thought that the taunt
must impel the lurking impulse from the shame of its
irresolution.

But Jack, like a child, allowed me to take the razor
away from him without more than a feint at a struggle,
and as I put it safely into my trousers pocket I saw
that an anti-climax would end the little drama of the
night.

Two days later he slunk into my rooms in Stuy vesant
Square and asked for it. Confident then that it would
not be misused, I gave it to him for the shave he badly
needed.

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

Sometimes "Charley" Stoddard (Charles Warren
Stoddard of the "South Sea Idylls") "dropped" in,
perhaps from Egypt or from San Francisco or from
the Pacific paradise, one of the gentlest and most plain
tive of little men, who was not inaptly described by Mark
Twain as "such a nice girl." He had a beseeching,
wistful, propitiating manner, shot with gleams of humour
that played as the sun plays through clouds. When he
smiled at you it was with a mute entreaty for sympathy.
Once he appeared in an old ulster, much too big for him,
its skirts sweeping the floor; he had borrowed it
from Joaquin Miller, "the poet of the Sierras,"
as he explained, without seeing any reason for our
laughter.

"Charley" would take from us anything he wanted,
and we could spare, as he took the air, or as a child
takes things, as a natural right, without constraint or
the awkward protestations of gratitude of the ordinary
receiver : a night's, a week's lodging, the freedom of one's
table, one's pipes, one's gloves, one's money, but when
his ships came home — they were always belated and
unlucky — restitution never failed, and what was his
at once became ours. Oh, those ships of the needy
and improvident! How long they were at sea! How
seldom they made port! And when they made port,
how shrunk were their freights! Like the Flying Dutch
man, few of them ever doubled the Cape. They were
like the ships of his own poem of "The Cocoa
Tree":

Cast on the water by a careless hand,

Day after day the winds persuaded me;

Onward I drifted till a coral tree
Stayed me among its branches, where the sand

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Gathered about me, and I slowly grew,

Fed by the constant sun and the inconstant dew.

The sea birds build then- nests against my root,

And eye my slender body's horny case;

Widowed within this solitary place,
Into the thankless sea I cast my fruit;

Joyless I thrive, for no man may partake

Of all the store I bear and harvest for his sake.

No more I heed the kisses of the morn;

The harsh winds rob me of the life they gave;

I watch my tattered shadow in the wave
And hourly droop and nod my crest forlorn,

While all my fibres stiffen and grow numb,

Beck'ning the tardy ships, the ships that never come.

"How many are the milestones on which I have sat,"
he wrote to me, "looking on my last dollar and wonder
ing where the next was to come from!" But he really
never worried much: each milestone was a mile nearer
to the happy valley; he had the true gypsy, vagabond
spirit, which receives without complaint whatever falls,
and frets not for more indulgence than an indifferent
fate bestows.

One of the most original of American authors;
one who could catch the soul of things below their
superficial and material aspects; one whose charm
inheres in a style and fancy too rarefied to be at
once or at all appreciated by the casual, unre-
flective, uncultivated reader, he will endure in that
first little book of the sea and flowers, which as
I reread it inclines me to call him the Charles Lamb
of the Pacific.

Robert Louis Stevenson was charmed by it and him.
He sketched him in "The Wrecker," the queer little
man who lived in a shanty on Telegraph Hill, and,

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A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

missing him one day, lie left under Stoddard's door this
jingle on a scrap of paper:

O Stoddard! in our hours of ease,

Despondent, dull, and hard to please,
When coins and business wrack the brow,
« A most infernal nuisance, thou!

0 Stoddard! if to man at all,
To me unveil thy face —

At least to me —

Who at thy club and also in this place
Unwearied have not ceased to call,
Stoddard for thee!

1 scatter curses by the row,

I cease from swearing never;
For men may come and men may go.
But Stoddard's out forever.

"South Sea Idylls" gave literature a fresh voice and
showed a new capacity in familiar words. It filled the
nostrils with the scent of lilies and orange flowers and
our ears with the diapason of the sea murmuring along
coral reefs.

He was always turning up unexpectedly in unexpected
ways. When I was in San Francisco he was the idol of
the Bohemian Club; then he went to the Sandwich
Islands and remained there so long and was so contented
with the simple life he was living, unharassed by cares
or ambitions, that I supposed he would never willingly
exchange the bread fruit and airy vesture of that perpetual
summer-land for the flesh-pots of prosaic civilization.
Later he was appointed professor of English Literature
at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, the choice
having been made on the principle that a teacher who
can reveal the soul of a book to his class is better than

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

the man whose only recommendations are syntax and
history. His methods were original (his spelling was
abominable), but they were no doubt effective, and while
the faculty were amply satisfied with his services, he
became immensely popular with the students. Then
he went to Covington, Kentucky. "I was so used up
when I left the college," he wrote to me, "that for some
months I felt as if I would never recover, but the loving
care of my good friends here, and the unspeakable purity
of the Kentucky whiskey, coupled with some weeks of
absolute rest and the absence of responsibility, have
pulled me through."

His affections reached out as devouringly as the ten
tacles of an octopus. After our meeting in San Fran
cisco we became correspondents, and though I wrote
to him, as I thought, without reserve, and with a warm
regard, we had only just begun when he protested that
my letters were "too formal."

"What does he expect?" said Saltus (not Edgar,
but his half-brother, Frank). "I suppose he thinks
you ought to address him as 'Dear old Pard, you mash
me. You're a Nineveh brick, and don't you forget it !' '

No one was hailed with more gladness in our symposia
at Oscar's than Maurice Barry more, the father of Ethel,
Lionel, and John. He would drift in after the play, one
of the handsomest fellows in town, well-bred and well-
read, captivating in manner, and unspoiled by any of
the affectations which cling like paint to so many young
actors when they move outside the theatre. In those
days he was fastidious as to his attire and not, as he
became later, careless of his personal appearance. His
mobile and sensitive face was as pallid as that of Edwin
Booth, and, like Booth's, his deep and significant eyes

[100]

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

gathered intensity in contrast with its ivory white
ness. He had some repose then, and was not the
flighty creature he afterward became through burn
ing his candle at both ends and in the middle, all at
once.

The leading man at the leading theatres, the ideal
jeune premier, he cared little or nothing for his success
as an actor. What he always wanted to do was to write
plays: that ambition was ever in his mind, ever on his
tongue. I have been told that, after his collapse, that
tragical collapse of his, when his mind gave way, the
passion reasserted itself, and the first thing he did was
to beg for pencil and paper and apply himself to the
preparation of a drama, the parts in which he assigned
to his fellows in misfortune.

Let us draw the curtain over that painful scene and
recall him as he was while unbereft: nimble in wit, ami
able, courteous, patient under attack, and aglow with
enthusiasm. I say, patient under attack. I have seen
him bear annoyance as only a strong man can, and shrug
his shoulders without other reprisal than a scathing word
or two which made the person to whom they applied
aware of his own ridiculousness.

Once, when we were talking, one among us persisted
in begging the question. He could not keep to it, but
muddled it with all sorts of irrelevance. If we spoke
of China he spoke of Peru; while we had Euripides in
hand he dragged in Andrew Jackson, or somebody else
unrelated to the discussion. It was impossible to pin
him down or to shut him up. I dare say many people
will recognize in him a by no means uncommon kind of
bore. Barrymore hit the right definition for him:
;tThe cuttlerish of conversation. It's no use to follow

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

him. If you do he will at once disappear in the cloud
of his own exudations."

Once in your company, "Barry," as we called him,
would stay, if you could, till dawn or long after dawn,
gaining rather than losing brilliance as the hours passed
and the world began to shake its chains. Out would
come his latest play, not a manuscript, not even notes,
but a rush of turbulent ideas not yet committed to paper.
With matches, ashes, or the tricklings from a glass he
would make a diagram of the stage, and then with his
finger indicate the action he proposed. At the begin
ning his synopsis would be lucid and detailed, and the
characters mentioned by name; then as he warmed
up he would abbreviate his exposition, giving names no
more, and substituting for them only personal pronouns
— "He" here, "She" there, while the action would be
described by gesticulations and running commentaries,
peppered with sulphurous expletives.

:<You see! You see! He comes in here, R. U. E., the
d — d — d — ! She's standing at a table, centre, ar
ranging flowers. He sneaks toward her. She sees him,
and cries 'Ah!' Taken by surprise. Horrified, clutches
the back of a chair. He seizes her by the wrist and
drags her toward him, and whispers in her ear. She
drops to the floor, moaning, paralyzed. Para'yzed!
He — the d — d — d ! grinds his teeth and is alarmed.
He springs to the doors, locks all of them. Shuts the
windows. Pulls down all the shades. Blows out the
lamps. You see? Comes back to her. Snarls. He
has a knife in his hand, the God-forsaken son of a sea-
cook, the hoofed and horned !!!"

On that, or something like it (the parody is confessed),
the curtain would come down, and the breathless Barry

[102]

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

would light another cigarette and say, "I am writing
that little bit for myself. I see myself in it. I feel
myself in it. And Georgie will do the widow."

" Georgie" was his wife, a very clever actress, the sister
of John Drew.

While he was with you he was indivisibly yours, and
the rest of the world had to wait for him; but when
the rest of the world captured him in its turn you became
the negligible quantity. His engagements were recorded
in air. He meant to keep them, no doubt; he was con
trite when he failed, but his clock stopped, and time had
no measurements as he abandoned himself to any society
that interested him. So amiable was he, so diverting,
so original, that his companions never willingly let him
go, and they were as much to blame, if not more, for his
delinquencies.

One day I met him in London, and took him to my
club for luncheon. We spent the whole afternoon to
gether very happily, and it sped faster than we reckoned.
Darkness came before he insisted that he must go, really
must. I urged him to stay to dinner, but no, he had an
imperative and unescapable engagement.

"At what hour?" I asked.

"At one o'clock," he replied, quite seriously, and it
was then close upon seven.

Many of the plays, probably most of them, were never
written. They came and went in and out of his mind
like shooting stars, dazzling him with their promise, and
then eluding him. Plays of that sort can be measured
only by their author's belief in them, and that is as good
as to say that the plays achieved are inferior to them.
They are unchallenged, uncriticized, unexposed to mis
understanding, jealousy 5 and depreciation. Their incu-

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

bation is an unalloyed delight, a pleasant dream with
out the disenchantment of any rude awakening. Never
theless, Barrymore made one substantial success in his
"Nadjesda," the sombre drama in which Modjeska
starred — the play which he believed inspired Sardou's
later "La Tosca." He was vituperative against the
wrong that he contended had been done him in that case.
He claimed that he had submitted "Nadjesda "to Bern-
hardt, and that after rejecting his manuscript she had
conveyed the essence of it to Sardou, wyho had used it
as the foundation of "La Tosca." In all other things
than play-writing he was one of the least vain of men.

You could please him by praising his acting, which
often deserved praise and received plenty of it from both
the people "in front" and his colleagues. His fellow-
players of all degrees were as warm in their regard for
him as those who were not in the profession, which can
be said of but a few actors. They were always repeating
his witticisms and giving examples of his ingenuity in
extricating himself from difficulties on the stage, such
as losing his "lines" and extemporizing till nothing but
the cue was saved. In his time he played many and
various parts excellently — Orlando, Maurice de Saxe,
and Jim the Penman; scores of them come back to mind,
none more vividly than Rawdon Crawley in Mrs. Fiske's
memorable adaptation of "Vanity Fair." But could he
have chosen his work, all other things would have been
abandoned for that consuming ambition which, down to
the very end, minimized and superseded all other inter
ests.

When my wife and I invited him to luncheon or dinner,
we usually looked for him at any hour but the hour
appointed, or, I should say, any hour later than the

[104]

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

hour appointed. Whenever he appeared — at three in
stead of one, or at nine instead of seven, though other
people's belatedness could not be similarly condoned —
he escaped reprimand, and at once imparted to any con
versation a fillip, making, as it were, still water effervesce.
One afternoon he arrived on the stroke of the clock,
surprising us as much by the spruceness of his attire
as by his exceptional punctuality. We had ceased to
expect either; long habit had accustomed us to his neglect
of both, and confirmed us in patience. Epigrams were
easy to him. He was not addicted to long speeches;
what he said was crisp and edged with raillery. We
talked of books, of pictures, and, be sure, of plays —
Shakespeare and the musical glasses. How he found
time to read I do not know, but he was a well-read man.
The conversation shifted to religion, and an avowal of
his led to an exclamation and a question.

"You are not a Roman Catholic, Barry!"
'Yes, William, I am, but I'm afraid God does not
know it!"

He stayed and stayed, remaining long after the others
had gone, and such a rapid change came over him as I
had never seen in any human being before and hope never
to see again. He became lachrymose, spasmodic, and
hysterical. He aged before our eyes as though years
were slipping away from him instead of hours. His
speech rambled and stumbled, tears filled his eyes, his
handsome face became haggard and senile. He pulled
himself together and laughed before his departure.
But the laughter was constrained, and when the door
closed, the door that had been opened for him so gladly,
I had a too soon verified presentment that we should not
meet him again.

[105]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Alas, poor Yorick! Draw the veil on his frailty, for
it was far outweighed by kindness and many other
merits. In his character and temperament he was not
unlike his own favourite of fiction — Fielding's Tom
Jones- — a sinner, but a very sweet one.

Sometimes we were twenty strong at Oscar's, and
among others were Edgar Fawcett, George Parsons
Lathrop, William Henry Bishop, H. C. Bunner, Francis
S. Saltus, and George Edgar Montgomery, "the poet
of the future," as the poor boy liked to be called, "the
poet of the middle of next week," as Saltus dubbed
him.

How much it takes to make a name, an enduring reputa
tion ! When we seem to be on the edge of it we are flicked
oS like flies by the new generation, which has its own
tastes and its own favourites. How good was the work
of Bishop, Bunner and Lathrop in criticism, verse, and fic
tion! High place and some permanence seemed assured
for them. Each had a quality of his own. Each was above
the average. Whimsical humour was the strong point of
Bishop and Bunner, a humour not dependent on the
slang of the streets, as so much of what passes as humour
now is. They wrote as educated men for educated people,
putting perhaps too great a value on style. So did
Lathrop, the son-in-law of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who,
essentially a poet, was compelled against his preferences
to be also a handy man of letters, of the kind editors
rejoice in. Whatever you gave him to do he did —
verse or prose, criticism, fiction, or history — with
sufficient skill and conscientiousness to conceal
from the reader the incubus of effort and dis
taste. His versatility was remarkable, his crafts
manship unimpugnable, and, though often restricted

[106]

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

to the ambling gait of hack work, he showed in the
breathing spaces of his manumission how good a seat
he had on Pegasus.

Ask now at the bookseller's for Lathrop's "Echo of
Passion," for Bunner's "Short Sixes" or for Bishop's
"Detmold," which Howells thought so much of that
he used it serially in the Atlantic. In all probability
he will say they are not in stock or that they are out of
print, referring you to the chances of the dust in a second
hand shop. Ah, my dear young friend, in whose ears
applause is ringing, enjoy it while you may, but put not
your faith in Posterity ! Posterity will snatch the laurels
which tickle your brow, and sponge your name with
the biggest and wettest of sponges from the slate,
that others may write on it. The grandchildren of
the girls who dote on you now will wonder how on
earth such dreary old stuff as yours could ever have
been popular.

Some day I should like to write an article on forgot
ten authors ; there are so many of them on whom neg
lect has unjustly and inexplicably fallen. Surely you
do not think yourself comparable with Theodore Win-
throp, Fitzhugh Ludlow, J. W. de Forest, Albert Web
ster, or Constance Fenimore Woolson? Yet who reads
them now? Very few remember even their names. I
will write that article and suggest to a publisher
a reprint of those discarded masterpieces of the
past. If, in the future, a fragment of you is en
shrined in that way, it will be all you can expect
from Posterity, and her twin sister, Oblivion, will resist
even that.

Only one in the set at Oscar's made a commercial
success. We liked him, but I am afraid we patronized

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

him. He had been in business in California and was
business-like in method and manner, not a dreamer, not
an idealist, to whom pelf was less than constancy to art.
He was thick in figure, thick- voiced, and pragmatic —
on a lower plane than we reckoned ourselves to be.
I think we classed him as an outsider; no doubt we were
a little priggish and too consciously superior, but he
was very amiable and forbearing, and in a degree pa
thetic. He had written a novel, and was convinced that
it was a great novel. The publishers did not agree with
him at all; probably no other novel met with more
discouragement from them than his did. But
rejection after rejection did not shake his steadfast
faith in it, and though inwardly from an incom
plete knowledge of it, we slighted it, his patience
and fortitude under rebuff compelled our admira
tion. In the end, I think, he published it at his own
cost.

His name was Archibald Clavering Gunter, and the
novel was "Mr. Barnes of New York." Fifty copies
of it, perhaps a hundred, sold to one of any of ours, and
it is not out of fashion yet. Gunter and it are not for
gotten. I do not mean to speak of them with disrespect.
The public will have what it wants, especially stories
of thrills and incessant action. Few of that kind excel
"Mr. Barnes" or the other stories of Gunter's, which
afterward flowed from him in a stream till they seemed
to inundate every bookstall, and even the trains moving
across the Continent. Afoot ourselves, we saw him
driving down the Avenue in his carriage with liveried
servants, as friendly as ever, and, for all that display,
ostensibly as simple as ever; and while we may have
murmured at the inscrutability of the public taste we

[1081

A CORNER OF BOHEMIA

did not forsake the composure and little refinements of
the quiet way.

Though lacking gold we never stooped

To pick it up in all our days;
Though lacking praise, we sometimes drooped.

We never asked a soul for praise.''

I have said that we were not to be found at Oscar's
in the daytime, but before assembling there we often
dined at places in the French Quarter, which was then
as French as France itself. Here was the Restaurant
du Grand Vatel, named after the celebrated and heroic
cook of Louis XIV, who, utterly chagrined at the failure
of a certain fish to arrive in time for one of his dinners,
ended his life by running a sword through his body.
The tariff was ridiculously moderate. A dish of soup
and a plate of beef and bread cost fifteen cents; soup
aux croutons, five cents; bceuf, legumes, ten cents; veau
a la Marengo, twelve cents; mouton a la Ravigotte, ten
cents, ragout de moutons aux pommes, eight cents;
bceuf braise aux oignons, ten cents; macaroni au gratin,
six cents; celeri salade, six cents; compote de pommes,
four cents; fromage Neufchatel, three cents; Limbourg,
four cents, and Gruyere, three cents. Extra bread was
a penny more, and though we insincerely protested
against it as a shameless extortion, we never made fifty
cents go farther than at those repasts. The very name
of the place increased the value received. The sono
rousness of it and its traditions sweetened the wine,
strengthened the coffee, and deepened repose. The
Black Cat confessed queerness. The Taverne Alsacienne
was obviously depraved; its atmosphere was of absinthe;
dark groups in blue blouses with tobacco pouches hung
from their necks whispered there of the Commune. . . .

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Where did you dine? There was grandeur in it — at
du Grand Vatel.

Then there were occasional intermissions in our pov
erty, when cheques came like feathers from an angel's
wings from the Galaxy, Harper's, Scribner's or Appleton's
Journal. The French Quarter was forsaken then.
Nothing was too good or too dear for us ; we made merry
at Delmonico's or at Seighortner's — the old mansion of
the Astor family in Lafayette Place, which retained the
quietude and dignity of a stately private house and pro
vided epicurean food — old Seighortner himself, oiliest of
hosts, hovering over us, smiling, and rubbing his hands ;
while the solemn and unhurried waiter set before us the
incomparable chicken gumbo, the pompano and English
sole and the bird so white and tender that it might
have been nursed in the bosom of the same angel
that had brushed us with her feathers.

Where is the laughter
That shook the rafter?
Where is the rafter, by the way?*-

VI
THE LURE OP THE PLAY

THOUGH we had not Barrymore's training for it,
we all wanted to write plays, and some of us
tried to do it, seeing, as we wrote, visions of
crowded houses, of long runs, and of riches unattainable
in any other way. "The Play's the thing, whereby"
— we'll fill our pockets and live ever after as well as the
doctor, the lawyer, the broker, the packer, and the pill-
maker.

What happened to us happens every day. The bun
dles of hopes and efforts left at the box office or the stage
door nearly always come back to us after a long delay,
or they are lost, with or without apologies, and we have
not courage enough to repeat the work. Between the
sanguine moment of deposit and the deferred return we
have no peace. From day to day the manager says,
"You shall have an answer to-morrow," and to-morrow
again tells you "to morrow," until the word becomes the
most repellant in the dictionary. He makes appoint
ments which he does not keep, and you hang about the
theatre, unable to fix your mind on the other things on
which your bread and butter depend. You sit in the
cryptic gloom of the "back of the house" in the daytime,
longing, fidgeting, sighing, while the hollow reverbera
tions of a rehearsal drift from the stage, and the brusque
doorkeeper transfixes you with instinctive suspicion
and antipathy.

[Ill]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

When you catch your man he is still in doubt —
always in doubt, sure of nothing but that he is in doubt.
But as you observe him rippling the pages of your manu
script and letting his eyes wander in abstraction over
the old programmes and pictures of actors and actresses
on the walls of the little room, you decide that suspense
is more endurable than doom.

"I don't know, I don't know," he slowly and exasper-
atingly murmurs, shaking his head vaguely while you
watch him as a weathercock veering in the wind, or as
a leaf eddying at a sharp bend of a river. He is the image
of vacillation, a creature of tormenting indecision, and
while he pauses, you feel like taking him by the throat
and crying, "Make up your mind and say 'yes>' or die!"

"I don't know, I don't know," he repeats in a sing
song voice.

He ought to know, for he has had the play for a year
or more. But, of course, you control yourself. If he
is a goose it must be remembered that he has been known
to hatch golden eggs. You despise his irresolution, but
by an effort keep your hands off him.

"I like the fourth act -

Ah, the man has some sense after all! You were
convinced that he must see the strength of the situation
in the fourth act. Your spirits rise with your respect
for his intelligence.

"I like the fourth act, but I don't know — I don't
know that it would go; no, I don't know."

You are sinking, and grasp at the last straw of elusive
chance. He has closed the manuscript, and almost
imperceptibly is pushing it over the table toward you.
You see it gliding toward you as Macbeth saw the dagger.

"Unless you're willing to leave it with me for a day

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

or two longer. Perhaps Billy had better read it again,
and I'd like to think it over myself."

"Billy," is his reader and adviser, and you are under
no misapprehension as to what the "day or two longer"
means: it means what no man can foretell, next month,
next year, or never. But like a craven you yield to the
outrageous procrastination, and weakly assent. "All
right. No, I don't want to hurry you. Take your
time by all means. It's very good of you to like the
fourth act; very good of you."

Then you creep away, full of contempt for yourself,
to make room for the lovely, palpitating, fluffy, flowery,
feathery young lady, the next candidate for employment,
who has been nervously preening herself and waiting
for you to go, and who sits in your chair, facing the
narrow, tarnished window, the shade of which he im
mediately raises so that all the light possible falls on her
while he scrutinizes her, pathologically, with his back
to it.

The next time you see him coming your way in the
street, your heart thumps. You think he will stop and
refer to the play, but he has nothing but a frosty nod
for you, if his face does not crimp into a semblance of
repudiation at the sight of you.

How you wait for the postman! And how your hand
trembles whenever you receive a letter, and you scrutinize
the corner and the seal for the imprint of that theatre.
"My wind is turned to bitter North," sang Arthur Hugh
Clough, and in that quarter it remains for you through
spring and summer, and you feel like a disembodied soul
floating among the nettles and mists of Purgatory. Not
a word comes to relieve you. You write and are not
answered. At last you call again, and this time "Billy"

[ITS]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

receives you, and greets you as "old man" in a pro
pitiatory way, though you are almost a stranger to him.
He is the personification of affability and good fellow
ship, and offers you a cigarette.

"How useful the cigarette habit is," a high official in
London said to me not long ago. "Time was when it
took twenty minutes or half an hour of polite prelimi
naries before I could find out what a caller wanted. Now
I offer him a cigarette, which establishes an immediate
intimacy, and we plunge into the heart of things, and
begin to be immoral at once."

"Billy" skims the universe, and talks of all sorts of
things: presses you to take another, and "old mans" you
as though you were, of all his chums, the most welcome.
He leaves you to speak of the play, and when you do
speak of it he says, "Ah," and fumbles in drawers and
among bundles of newspapers and other manuscripts,
turning over all the litter in his search for the precious
document, the ink of which has been drawn from your
life-blood. Perhaps he fails, and in that case he tells
you it must be in the safe, of which the manager has the
key, and that it shall be sent to you by special messenger
in the evening. If he produces it, you listen to him as
the prisoner in the dock listens to the foreman of the jury.
He slaps it with his hand, raising a cloud of dust.

"A bully good play, and you'll place it, sure. Take
it to Frohman or Belasco: either of 'em will jump at it,
both of 'em will jump at it. But the fourth act needs
strengthening; it's the weakest. I'd rewrite that —
Going? Here! Have another cigarette."

That last cigarette is the token of the sympathy he
does not express.

Perhaps, however, the wind softens just as patience

[114]

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

has been drawn, like an elastic band, close to the point
at which it must break and recoil. Not the subordinate
but the manager summons you, and when you present
yourself he is in his chair, as abstracted and distraught
as ever. You smile abjectly, he thaws a little but only
along the edges, the ice beyond revealing no "lead,"
such as polar explorers describe, through the hummocked
barrier of frost. But you become subconscious in a dim,
psychological way similar to that by which you sense
spring in the air before a bud appears, that a change for
the better impends, though the weathercock is not
steady, and Hope whispers not that "he will" but that
he "may." Why otherwise should he fetch the play out
of the drawer again, and show the interlineations and
queries in his own hand on the now soiled pages? You
thank God that he does not see-saw more than twice or
thrice in his wearisome negation, "I don't know." He
is slow and hesitating, yet you see that he is making an
effort to resolve himself into some sort of decision.

"Well, we'll try it. I don't think it will go, but we'll
try it."

Then you reproach yourself and retract all the unholy,
unjust, homicidal thoughts you have had of him, and
you have difficulty in restraining a wild, Gallic impulse
to embrace him. He isn't a palaverer, a flatterer, but
a cautious, responsible, discriminating man, all the surer
to lead you to success through his possession of those
qualities. Your play has been in the crucible of his calm
and scientific criticism, and triumphs because its merits
have prevailed after the closest scrutiny &nd analysis,
and are no longer open to criticism.

What heavenly music is it that falls on your ear?
"Author!" "Author!" "Author!"

[,115]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

It is like trees swaying in the wind and mingling their
voices with the patter of falling water. It is the applause
of the audience in front, demanding your presence before
the curtain at the end of the fourth act, on the first night.
Anticipation runs away with you: beware lest she trips
you short of the iridescent goal. There are pitfalls
everywhere on the way.

You have frequent consultations with "Billy" now,
which shake your faith in his competency, even in his
sanity. He spoils the symmetry of the play; trans
poses the situations, or discards them, and blue-pencils
the most eloquent lines; pshaws! the sparkling epigrams
you have excogitated with all the pains of parturition.

"No, old man! That'll never do. They wouldn't
stand it, never!"

His elisions are hard enough to bear, but less annoying
than his interpolations, which are perverted, tasteless,
mechanical, and , contrary to plausibility and reason.
"Billy " has a bad reputation. His enemies say that when
it suits him, he is not above using in any play he has
in hand, ideas plagiarized from other plays which have
been rejected. You groan at what you have to put up
with in your intercourse with him, including his ciga
rettes and his fondness for cocktails and "high balls,"
but your conferences with him give you access to the
theatre in the daytime — not merely to the auditorium
during a performance, but to the arcana at the back
of the house, that enchanting, esoteric region of mystery
and twilight, where draughts blow, and the sounds are
as spectral as those of the catacombs. The finest per
formance seen in all its completeness from the stalls is
dull and commonplace compared with the view you get
of it behind the scenes. The consciousness of privilege

[116]

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

flatters you; participation in the creation of illusion is
far more absorbing than subjection to it. The discipline
of all who are producing it — the stage manager, the
property men, the electricians, the scene shifters and the
actors themselves — fill you with awe and admiration.
They hang on words, and the moment the words are
spoken they respond as instantaneously as galley slaves
under the whip. They are alert, anxious, strained.

I have met many actors in their dressing-rooms be
tween the acts - - Edwin Booth, Richard Mansfield,
Henry Irving, and Herbert Beerbohm Tree; yet I have
never seen one who under the stress was quite at his ease,
or who could do more than make a polite attempt to
listen or talk to you, even when you have come at his
bidding. Mansfield reproached me if he saw me in the
audience and I failed to present myself to him and his
devoted wife, Beatrice, before the close of the play; but
if I went I always found him on needles and pins, sweat
ing, petulant, tremulous, and agitated to the verge of
prostration. So swift is the obedience to commands,
so utterly devoted and concentrated on his task is every
member of the company and every member of the staff,
high and low, that I can think of nothing but the gun
crew of a battleship in action as a parallel.

The operation of all the wonderful machinery, human
and mechanical, is best disclosed during a regular per
formance or at the "dress reheasal," which immediately
precedes the first presentation of a piece to the public;
but daytime in the theatre has a spell of its own; then
you are out of this world and in another — a place of
stumblings and surprises; of choked passages and un
expected steps up and down; of dusky labyrinths, in
which you lose and bruise yourself, and find yourself in

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

perplexing recesses where you know you ought not to
be. You knock against partitions, and look aloft to
cloud-like hangings, guys, blocks, and pulleys like the
standing and running gear of a ship. Here all the top-
hamper seems to have come down on the run after a
squall, and beyond are backgrounds — the unilluminated
scenery — with splotchy colours like faded tapestries.
A voice gathers volume and distinctness from the silence,
and drones like that of a preacher heard from within in
an empty and quiet church-yard. It is the manager
catechising the fluffy, flowery, girlish aspirant in his
sanctum. Afterward it rises angrily. He is scolding, yes
actually scolding, nay, bullying, that pinnacled, magnif
icent, imperious creature, the leading man, whom you have
regarded as a greater despot than the manager himself.

I have said "you" over and over again, but whose
experience am I describing? Not yours alone, but the
experience of most of the beginners who have ever passed
the enchanted portals of the theatre to become familiar
with its unbalanced pains and pleasures, its exaltation
and its despair.

And, by the way, the matter of the contract has yet
to be discussed. You will have views of your own about
that, and will endeavour to slip them in somehow if you
get the chance. You have heard of the terms exacted
by Pinero, of his splendid percentages of the box-office
receipts, of fortunes made out of a single play. But you
know that you are not Pinero and your expectations are
not exorbitant; probably you are ready, or too ready, to
take whatever the manager offers. He is likely to propose
buying the play outright instead of paying royalties
on each performance of it, and you will say with a
parched tongue in a quavering voice, "All right."

[118]

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

I remember Edgar Fawcett's experience with his
first play, which A. M. Palmer of the old Union Square
Theatre had read and liked. I waited in the vestibule
while Edgar was closeted with him. I was as much
interested in the result as if the play had been my own.
When Edgar reappeared trembling with excitement he
threw decision on me.

"William! He says he will give me twenty -five dol
lars for every evening performance, and fifteen dollars for
every matinee, or five hundred dollars down as a pur
chase price! Five hundred dollars down, William!
Down ! "

The emphasis on "down" was touching; the word
never could have been used in a fuller sense than it was
then. Both of us were needy, and were seldom if ever
in possession of so vast a sum; it seemed like tempting
Providence to refuse having it at once and all at once.
What a dinner we could have at Delmonico's, or at his
club, the Union, to which he had belonged since his
twenty -first year, his father having "put him up"
in boyhood ! Though he worked in an attic in Tompkins
Square he was a frequenter of the fashionable and
opulent Union and ruffled it with the best of them
there.

I could see "down" casting its spell over the poor
boy to the exclusion of other considerations. I was
calmer than he was, and better able to weigh the alter
natives. There could be no question as to the probity
of Palmer, one of the most intelligent and honourable
of managers, who with such plays as "The Two Orphans "
and "Led Astray" had, withaut previous theatrical
experience, lifted the little Union Square into a high
place. At that time he never made the mistakes which

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

later on reversed his fortune. Each long run was
followed by another as long or longer.

"If it should be a failure and run for only a month
the royalties would amount to six hundred and sixty
dollars," I figured.

"But it might run only a week, or never be produced
at all. Lots of plays are accepted, and a few of them are
announced on the bills, and then withdrawn. Five
hundred dollars downl Oh, William!"

He reluctantly decided on the royalties, and his play,
"A False Friend," filled the better part of a season,
bringing him, with the added royalties from other
theatres, nearer four thousand dollars than five hundred.

I had a curious little adventure of my own. I wrote
a four-act comedy drama called "A Latter Day Gentle
man," the leading part in which I designed (with all
his idiosyncrasies before me) for H. J. Montague, to
whom, I think, the now hackneyed and tiresome epithet,
a "matinee idol," was first applied. Women doted on
him. His voice dripped tears like Bernhardt's when
emotion was required; its cadences were as music. He
was gentlemanly on and off the stage, not robust or
virile enough for swaggering romantic parts, but perfect
in garden and drawing-room scenes, appealing and
irresistible in his beauty and his heaven-sent suavity.
I visualized him in every word I wrote, conforming my
character to all his abilities and to all his limitations.
The part was that of a barrister of the Inner Temple:
a heavy swell; a tame, purring sort of creature on the
surface, but below that veneer a devil of a fellow, astute,
ingenious, and courageous, with a tongue of wit and
sarcasm which wiped out every adversary. The reader
may smile, but he should remember that those were

[120]

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

the days of Robertson, and that my hero was to be im
personated by Montague.

I sent him a scenario, and though the accompanying
letter was written on editorial note-paper he did not,
strange to say (for editorial note-paper is not often
ignored), pay any attention to it. Perhaps his answer
miscarried, but I, twenty-three, and more important
than I have been since, did not deign to inquire. I was
on the eve of departure as special correspondent of
the New York Times with the Wheeler Expedition,
a military survey of the unmapped regions of Arizona,
southern Colorado, and New Mexico, and a little of the
"ready," as the English call it, was very desirable for
my equipment. So I despatched my play to Arthur
Cheney, who had an excellent stock company at the
Globe Theatre, in Boston and offered to sell it to him for
what a manuscript of equal length would "fetch" from
Harper's Magazine or Scribner's Monthly. He took it
so quickly that I at once suspected I had thrown my
work away and been foolish in not asking for more: my
refilled purse, comforting as it was, should have been
fuller of bills of larger denominations. It is imprudent,
however, to haggle about the price of a gun with the man
who, in a safe place himself, offers it to you while the
wolf is at the door. Ah, those wolves at the door ! How
many of them one encounters on the thorny trails of a
literary career! What an uneasy time you have be
tween them and the missing ships for which you wait
in vain!

Before the field season was over, and while I was
still among the lava beds, the mesas and canons of the
Southwest, Cheney died, and also the fascinating Mon
tague. A year or so afterward I was lunching with Mr.

[121]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Palmer at the Union Square Hotel, and W. R. Floyd,
who had been the stage manager of Cheney's theatre,
sat down with us. I asked him about my play.

"I can tell you all about it," he said, though that was
saying too much. "Cheney bought it to sell again to
Montague. That part --what's his name? — might
have been written for poor old Harry. It would have
fitted him like a glove. Then we passed it on to Lester
Wallack, and he thought of doing it, but was dissuaded.
The part was too juvenile for him, of course, but Lester
didn't see that, poor old chap. He'd act Cupid, with
golden wings and a waxed moustache if anybody en
couraged him. Now "

The story grew in interest as it approached the climax J
Floyd aimed a finger at Palmer.

"Now, Palmer, you've got it. When Wallack re
turned it, it was sent to you. Own up."

Palmer had no recollection of it, not even of the title.
Perhaps Cazauran had it- "Caz," Palmer's factotum,
a little dark man of many languages, a master of theatri
cal devices, the David Belasco of that era, who worked
plays over and made them presentable by changes which,
however they displeased the authors, suited the public.
I have not an ill word for " Caz," though there were some
who disliked him. He had a genius for theatrical sit
uations of the kind which thrill audiences and fill the
house — situations which I believe the majority will
long prefer to the documentary, undemonstrative, ra
tional plays insisted upon by the few zealots of the new
drama. He was friendly to me, and I had as little reason
to question his honesty as Mr. Palmer's. "The Latter
Day Gentleman" could not be found, nor has it ever
been found to my knowledge up to the present. Possi-

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

bly it fell into the hands of some "Billy," and, renamed,
reconstructed, its scenes transplanted, its characters
Americanized or Australianized, it was somewhere and
somehow in some degree a success, though not such a
success as it could have been had the curled Montague
taken the principal part and delivered its lines in that
melodious, melting, tender voice of his which seemed to
trickle down the hearer's spine.

When I told a veteran who had written many plays
that I was writing one, he said, "Don't do it. They
(the people of the theatre) will wear your heart out."
But some hearts endure as long as breath lasts, and no
grindstone ever wears them out.

From this by-path I must return to you, quivering,
dry-mouthed, in your chair in that dark, stuffy little
room, and watching furtively the manager's eyes roving
from you to the stained portraits and programmes on the
walls as though he were disturbed by other and far more
important matters than you and your work. You are
afraid that if you stand off he will back out. You know
that you are not Pinero, and the man opposite knows
that he holds the trump cards. A nervous cough be
trays you. He who, unafflicted with a cold, coughs in
that way during a business negotiation marks himself
as one whose hand is weak, and who can be either cajoled
or browbeaten. It is a case of take it or leave it, and
at a sign of impatience from him you precipitately sur
render, repeating, "All right," and adding, "Thanks.
So much obliged." Thus it ends: the play becomes his,
and the money yours. He is not wanting in sagacity
in preferring to buy a piece outright on the basis of pos
sible failure than to pay royalties proportioned to pos
sible success.

[123]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Probably months pass before you hear of it again;
it may be announced in the bills, and even then post
poned, owing to an unexpectedly long run of the piece
on the boards, or because from London, Paris, or Berlin
comes an assured success by some well-known dramatist,
to delay it; the purchaser may decide after all that it
will not do, and sacrifice the small amount of his check
rather than take too many chances with it; it may be
buried in a cupboard, a drawer, or the safe, to the end
of your days: everybody but you may forget all about
it, and you alone may worry and protest, the sole suf
ferer of gnawing uncertainty. Worry you must; no
effort of the mind, not all the "science" of all psycho
therapists can save you, and whatever you attempt
in the vocation that has previously engaged you loses
its spontaneity and drags like shackles of the soul.

Let us suppose, however, that after the delay it is
put in rehearsal. It is doubtful whether it is "Billy's"
work or yours when he is done with it, and other changes
are made in the manuscript as the rehearsals proceed.
The cast is chosen, orders are given to the property man
and the scene painter,

"I want for the first act," says the manager to the
painter, "a scene in the diamond fields of South Africa;
for the second, the exterior of an Elizabethan house; for
the third, a handsome library; and, for the fourth, a
conservatory. The diamond fields must be shown as
at evening, the house and the library must be charac
teristic of the home of an old and prosperous family, and
the conservatory must be as fine a 'set' as you can paint."

The painter then submits a number of plates to
the manager: a picture from the Illustrated London
News or the Graphic may give a suggestion of

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THE LURE OF THE PLAY

what is wanted for the scene at the diamond fields;
the illustrations of a work on the baronial homes
of England may include such a library and exterior as
would suit : and perhaps for the conservatory he submits
a hasty water-colour drawing of his own or a design
from some book on architecture.

"That's the thing," says the manager, pointing to
selections from these, and he picks out the plates which
fit his idea of what the scenes should be; and the artist
gives him an estimate of the cost of production, specify
ing the quantities of lumber, canvas, and paint that will
be required to build up a diamond gully, the Elizabethan
mansion, and the conservatory. Perhaps the estimate
is too large and is reduced, but he, more probably, is
told to prepare his models with few limitations as to cost.

Now the property man is consulted. The rocks that
will lie about the stage in the diamond field, the cat
aract in the background, the implements of the miners,
the tents and the wagons, the furniture in the library,
and all the appurtenances of the conservatory are
to be made or procured by him and disposed of on the
stage before the performance begins. The rocks are to
be of papier-mache, and the cataract is to be simulated
by a revolving drum of tinsel or glass beads with a strong
light upon it. It is his business, or the mechanician's,
to construct them, and the artist's to paint them. Every
article used on the stage is in the property man's charge.
The crowns of kings, the cross of Richelieu, the whip
of Tony Lumpkin, the bleached skull of Yorick, the bell
which the victorious hero strikes before having the dis
comfited villain shown to the door, and the fat purse
with its crackling bank-notes and jingling coin which
the honest but virtuous clerk refuses in the face of

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHEKS

temptation — all belong to the property man's depart
ment. The demands on his ingenuity and research
take him into every kind of shop in every quarter of the
city. He has dealings with ironmongers, milliners, up
holsterers, and merchants of curios. The magnificent
and costly suite of carved oak in the library scene, which
is not veneer but substantial furniture, and the most
trivial objects — a handbag or a hatrack — he must secure
and put, night after night, in the exact place which the
stage directions have prescribed. Each new play re
quires, of course, some new articles, and the accumulated
stock is uniquely various from which the accoutrements
of princes and potentates, beggars and nobles, soldiers
and lackeys, priests and highwaymen, the riotously
anachronistic material of a fancy-dress ball, may be
gathered.

The scene painter is provided at the preliminary
consultation with a "scene plot," wherein the exits and
entrances, the doors, windows, and other openings
necessary in the action of the play are specified, and at
the same time a "property plot "is handed to the prop
erty man. As I have said, each article has an appointed
place in which he must keep it, and we all know the
embarrassing consequences of any negligence of his, as
when the leading actor sits at a table to sign away
his birthright and can find neither the pen nor the ink
which the property plot calls for.

Another person has to be considered in mounting the
play, and that is the carpenter, who builds up the frame
work of the scene and constructs the mechanical appur
tenances, such as the flight of steps down the rocks in
the diamond gully, the galleries in the library, the balus
trade in the conservatory, and all the doors and windows,

[1261

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

The artist, the property man, and the machinist are
together the craftsmen of the drama, and when they
have been fully instructed — when the artist has his
plot, the property man his, and the machinist his, and
when the painter's models have been approved by the
manager --the actors are called to hear the play read.
A parenthesis is necessary here as to what the scene
painter's models are, for the term is misleading. He
has a small stage upon which he paints and sets each
scene exactly as it is to appear on the larger one,
except that it is on the reduced scale of half an inch
or less to the foot of actual space; and the miniature,
which is called a model, serves to guide him in his work
and to give the manager a preliminary glimpse of what
the finished scene will be.

Somewhere against the wall in a mysterious precinct
hangs a board or a glass case in which the official notices
of the management are exhibited; and one day a written
slip is pinned or pasted in it which contains these words:
"Company called for "A Lame Excuse' at 10 A.M.
Monday," "A Lame Excuse" being your play. There
have been rumours of "something underlined" among
the actors already, and when the call is made, the nature
of the work, who of the company will be in it, what parts
there are, and the probabilities of success, are discussed
with much volubility.

If you were Pinero you would at this point become
the despot of the stage. In all of his later productions
he has insisted on the prerogative denied altogether or
conceded only occasionally to other authors, of choosing
the interpreters of his work and instructing them in
every detail without deference to any other instruments
than his own will and purpose, to which both manager

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

and actor must surrender. I can remember him when
he himself was a minor actor at the Lyceum under Henry
Irving, where the author was expected to submit to every
change and every choice which the manager thought
desirable. Irving was the autocrat there, and it was the
author, whether he was obscure and diffident or as
illustrious and exacting as Tennyson himself, who had
to submit to the discretion of the great actor-manager.
There are few, if any, managers who, though entirely
destitute of Irving's genius to justify it, do not attempt
to exercise a similar tyranny, or will grant to the author
more than the liberty of appeal and suggestion. Prob
ably Sir Arthur is the only living dramatist who has so
completely reversed the relations in this respect of the
manager and the author. The play must be produced
as he has written it, the various parts assigned to the
actors who are physically and temperamentally closest
to his conception. These are bitter and irksome condi
tions to those who are in the habit of recognizing no
authority above their own, and Sir Arthur may be said
to stand in "splendid isolation" in his ability to exact
them. Nor is anything lost to art or of commercial
advantage by the transfer of authority. With his inti
mate and practical knowledge of the technicalities of
the stage and his psychological divinations, he has a
genius for the selection of those actors who by art and
nature are capable of merging their individualities in
the parts they are engaged for.

Being but a novice you may not be consulted at all.
The first rehearsal is "with parts" — that is to say,
the company appear in their street clothes, and without
acting read the lines from typed copies in ordinary con
versational tones — and while this is in progress the

[128]

THE LURE OF THE PLAY

manager has in his hands the complete play interleaved
with blank pages, upon which he notes any further
alterations that seem to be desirable. The effect on an
unfamiliar observer of that rehearsal "with parts" is
grotesque. The leading lady sits in a chair and swings
her parasol and chats with her neighbour, while one of
the gentlemen opposite to her reads a declaration of love
in a sing-song voice from a roll of paper in his hand.
Another member of the company has the lines: "Here
for centuries the Mordaunts have lived the simple and
honourable lives of English country gentlemen; here
they have been born; here they have died; and among
them all not one of them has ever done aught mean or
base. Here, in this grand old hall, a reputation has been
built which the proudest of nobles envy"; and should the
spectator, following the wave of the actor's hand, look
for the hall to which the speech refers, he would only
discover the stage before him, with no scene set upon it,
with the wings and the "flats" stacked up at the rear,
the company scattered near the centre, and a few
gas or electric lamps, paled by the rays of daylight
issuing from a yellowish window. The heroine
at another point, wandering, as the lines suppose,
about the ample gardens of the Elizabethan house
at twilight, bids her lover come and hear the
cuckoo, but it is only the knocking of the machinist's
hammer and the voices of the property men and the
scene painter, who are working in the "flies" high above
the proscenium, that are audible, and not the note of
a bird.

At each rehearsal, something is added in gesture and
tone, which strengthens the representation. The toil,
perseverance, and discipline which are entailed cannot

[129]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

be imagined by one who has not traced the progress of
a new play at a good theatre. Whenever it seems that
the most has not been made of a line or a situation it
is repeated again and again. The "business" is gradually
improved, and the author sees the company working
with greater fluency at each trial.

On the first night the theatre is filled to the doors.
There is a murmur of interest and curiosity. No one
is more excited than the manager and you are. You,
if you can stand the strain at all, hide yourself in a box
or in the "wings"; if you cannot stand it, you absent
yourself from the theatre and wait for the verdict at
a distance in an agony of suspense like that of the uxorious
young husband in Barrie's story, who paces the streets
in trepidation while he wonders whether it will be a
boy, a girl, twins, triplets, or nothing worth mentioning.

[ 130 1

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

ONE afternoon I was told that I must be at Oscar's
that evening, for Aldrich was coming. The
invitation needed no pressure, for at that time
I was "playing the sedulous ape," as Stevenson calls it,
to three authors at once — to James (we could read him
without nut-crackers then), Ho wells, and Aldrich, who,
for all his simplicity, was the most difficult to imitate.

He came early and stayed late. He was a good Bohe
mian then, and though his circumstances changed
materially in later life, he always loved a quiet pipe,
and was never happier than in the company of people
of his own profession. He did not reserve himself for
those who had won their laurels, but met as comrades
those who were young, struggling, and unknown, without
either condescension or the manner of benevolent tol
erance from the heights of superiority. That is not to
say that he patted everybody on the back. He warmed
only to those who appealed to him through a kindred
spirit. With others he could be cold and incommuni
cable enough. He was not of the complaisant kind, who
from mere politeness readily acquiesce in what is passing.
One could never be mistaken as to his likes and dislikes,
for he was frankly outspoken whenever anything jarred
him. Nor was he captious or rough in opposition.
His weapon was raillery ; it flashed in the air and pricked
without venom and without leaving any rankling wound.

[131]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

He literally laughed away those who crossed swords with
him, and left them laughing too.

I can see him now, sitting at the round table at Oscar's,
holding a briar pipe that was oftener between his fingers
than in his mouth, and swinging it in graphic curves
as he talked to us. He used it like a painter's brush or
pencil. He was dressed in a quiet suit of tweeds, the
sobriety of which was relieved by a flowing crimson
scarf gathered at the neck by an antique ring. He was
partial to crimson in those days, and it became his com
plexion and the light curls apostrophized by Bayard
Taylor. We parted late and in a merry mood, the young
fellows among us glorying in the new friend who was so
witty, so suave, and so attentive to our ambitions and
aspirations. Moreover, Aldrich had just succeeded to
the editorship of the Atlantic Monthly, and hopes arose
of possible advantages lying for young authors in that
direction.

"I'll have an elegy ready for him before breakfast,
and try to get ahead of Edgar," said Frank Saltus, refer
ring to Edgar Fawcett, as the lights went out in Oscar's
and we dispersed; and on the following morning he came
to me, dissembling an air of despondence.

"It's no use. Edgar's beaten us all. He shipped a
carload to the Atlantic by the fast freight before daylight
— as per invoice, sonnets, ten bales ; triolets, ballads,
and rondeaux, three bales; novels and short stories,
twenty tons in fifteen crates."

Edgar was beyond comparison the most prolific of
all of us. His industry and his versatility were amazing.
A member of fashionable clubs, and with a home in the
best part of the town, he hid himself for work in a mean
attic in the slums near Tompkins Square, and wrote

[132]

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

there from ten or eleven in the morning till four or five
every afternoon. He never waited for moods or allowed
lassitude to excuse inaction. Like Anthony Trollope, he
always had a bit of cobbler's wax in his chair, and lifting
himself by application and pertinacity out of any threat
ening lethargy, he compelled production and found
exhilaration in his fecundity without disturbing himself
by assaying his output too closely. His most serious
work appeared under his own name, of course, but, under
one pseudonym he poured forth sensational stories
in cheap weeklies, and under another — feminine —
pious verse for religious papers.

Aldrich accepted some of his contributions (not by any
means the wholesale consignment Saltus imagined),
but he was never timid in rejecting what he did not want,
nor mealy-mouthed about it. His bitter pills were not
sugar coated; he could not flatter, and never ran away
from disagreeable duties in an obscuring cloud of euphu
isms. On the contrary, he could be amply candid, not
to say blunt, when his opinion was pressed for. Edgar
insisted on reasons, and, getting them, flew into a temper
with them. A vituperative and inflammatory letter
from him left Aldrich quite unmoved. He smiled at it,
but never answered it.

I remember another of that coterie, a very young author
indeed. He acquired daintiness and polish at the sacri
fice of force and originality. He was confident of a story
into which he thought he had put his best, and was
bewildered when Aldrich handed it back to him.

"Isn't it well written?" he asked.

"Very well written."

"I thought you would like some of the touches in
it."

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

"There are beautiful things in it."

"Then what's the matter with it?"

"It isn't interesting."

That was all Aldrich said, and the author took it as
irrevocable. Aldrich did not even say he was sorry,
but perhaps it was to show his sympathy that he invited
the disappointed young man to lunch with him. Lunch
eon did not lighten the gloom of the guest, and before
they parted, Aldrich, hesitating as he approached the
subject and almost stammering, said, "Is there any
trouble — anything the matter — besides that story?
Because if you are — hard up, you know, I — I can let
you have a little money."

Soon after our first meeting in New York I was called
to an editorial position in Boston, and for many years
I saw him constantly. At least once a week and some
times every day I called for him toward noon at the
office of the Atlantic in Park Street, that snug little room,
at the head of a narrow winding stairway, which over
looks the Old Granary Burial Ground.

"The Contributors' Club," he said, for my informa
tion, using his pipe as an indicator, when I first gazed
out on the closely packed tombstones of the fathers and
mothers of old Boston.

It always seemed to me that he belonged to other
times than our own, and that he had strayed, like a
traveller returned, out of an earlier century, the eigh
teenth or a remoter one. There was something of
Herrick in him, something of Sir Philip Sidney, and
something of Lovelace. At the latest he would have
been at home in the age of Queen Anne. A sword and
a cocked hat; ruffles of lace and a coat of lavender velvet,
strapped with gold; a doublet of creamy satin, also

[134]

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

frilled and embroidered; knee breeches and silk hose,
would have become him better than the quiet clothes
he always wore.

Without swagger, he had the swing and gayety of a
cavalier; an ancient grace, precise but not solemn; a
blithe heart and a habit of seeing things through the airy
fancy and high resolves of a still earlier gallantry, even
the gallantry of a knight-errant riding through the forest
of the world with songs on his lips and a wit as nimble
as his sword. And one could imagine him thus, without
levity or any sense of the fantastic.

Nor did advancing years stiffen him or rob him of his
winsome ease and placid urbanity: these were part of
him to the end. Not a bit effeminate, and not illiberal
or prudish, he resented, wherever he encountered it,
everything that had a suspicion of vulgarity. The
humour and the wit of others delighted him and stimu
lated him while they were refined, but the moment they
ceased to be that, his merriment ceased and his disap
proval was expressed by a frigidity of manner in sudden
contrast to his habitual geniality.

He never seemed to be busy, and could always spare
time to relight the slow-burning pipe which he smoked
with the insouciance and economy of an Oriental. What
ever the hour, no welcome visitor was dismissed, so far
as I could see, and reversing his chair away from his
desk, often astride it, he would cheerfully turn his back
on manuscripts and proofs, and let the printer's devil
wait, regardless of the urgency of his errand. His con
versation was even better than his writings, and, like
them, crisp, pointed, and inimitably and impressively
whimsical. It seemed to be impossible for him to say
a commonplace thing, or to say anything that did not

[135]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

end in some unexpected turn to evoke the smiles or laugh
ter of the listener.

"You've only got to touch him, and he goes off like a
Roman candle, " Doctor Holmes once said of him to me.

And yet he was a painstaking editor, and sooner or
later, in some mysterious way, got through all the work
that was so precariously deferred. Not a line was
printed that he had not scanned, and to a greater extent
than most editors have the patience for, in that round,
legible hand of his, which bears so extraordinary a resem
blance to Longfellow's, he personally corresponded with
even the least important of his contributors, writing
treasured letters to them, which, no matter how brief,
always had some glint of his abounding and pervasive
wit and humour.

After all, he was always a boy until the premature
death of his son, which threw unwonted and unfamiliar
shadows upon the rest of his days, and dimmed the gayety
which hitherto had been inextinguishable. Not with
standing his gayety, he was quickly emotional and
spontaneously sympathetic with any unhappiness or
misfortune that came to his knowledge. A friend who
had complained to him of being depressed received a
few hours later what appeared to be a bottle of medicine.
It was packed with all a druggist's neatness and pre
cision, in a white wrapper, and duly sealed with red wax.
The wrapper removed, a pinkish liquid was discovered,
together with written directions: "Tincture of Cock-
tailia. Shake well before using. A wineglassful to be
taken before meals. Dr. Aldrich. "

But trifles like that were not the measure of his kind
ness. He was easily moved, and as ready with service
as with sympathy. Among his dearest friends was an

U361

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

illustrious actor whom he saved from himself in long
periods of depression, walking, riding, and rowing with
him during the day, and accompanying him to the theatre
at night in order to protect him from a gnawing and dis
astrous appetite. In a measure it was due to his patience
and his cheerfulness that ultimately his friend recovered
his self-control.

Most of the time Aldrich was not Aldrich to me.
In a country newspaper a printer's error had made his
name "T. Baldrich," and it so tickled^ him that as
"T. Baldrich" I usually addressed him.

When I was building a country cottage, in which
he took as much interest as if it had been his own, we
one morning entered a decorator's in Park Street, who
showed us a wonderful opalescent window which had in
it all the radiance of morning, noon, and evening. It
was backed by another sheet of glass on which a ship
had been outlined, and against the light she swam in
tropic splendour, the colours changing with the hours.
Not a result of design, but of an unaccountable accident
in the kiln, it was unique, and attempts made to repro
duce it had been without success. I asked the price,
and we left the shop. A few days later the window was
delivered at our cottage, and with it a note from Aldrich
hoping that sometimes when we looked at it we might
remember a friend.

As a slight return I sent him, the following Christmas,
an etching by Pennell, of Trafalgar Square, in which all
objects were reversed — St. Martin's Church, for in
stance, appearing in the west instead of in the east.
Aldrich declared himself pleased with this effect. "To
correct it I have merely to stand on my head and look
between my legs. What if the church is upside down?

[137]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

It is then on the right side of the square, and all my topo
graphical scruples are satisfied. "

Confident and even aggressive among intimates, he
was curiously shy among strangers, especially in public
gatherings of all kinds, and had a strong aversion to
speech-making. I remember a great garden party,
given by Governor Claflin, at Newton, under the auspices
of the Atlantic, to celebrate one of the many birthdays
of Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was expected to be one
of the chief celebrants of the occasion, but he shunned
the crowd and moved about the edge of it, until at last
we found ourselves out of sight and hearing of it. The
master of the ceremonies pursued him, and discovered
him like a truant school-boy.

"Here, Aldrich, you must keep your end up!
Come on!"

Aldrich was inarticulate and as soon as his pursuer
disappeared flew with me tor the station. Soon after
ward, and long before the ceremonies had ended, we were
at his cottage on Lynn Terrace, not hearing speeches
or making them, but listening to the breakers tumbling
against the rocks of that pleasant sea-side retreat. I
suspect that he realized his disgrace: it was not the con
sequence of any reluctance to do homage to Mrs. Stowe,
but rather of his unconquerable dislike of gregariousness
and publicity.

Another day I found him walking up and down in
front of the door that led from the publishing offices to
the almost monastic seclusion of the editorial room.
"I am afraid to go in," he confided. "I am afraid
they'll laugh at this," he added, touching his brand-
new silk hat, a sort of head-gear which I had never
seen him in before. There was something of playful

[138]

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

exaggeration in his embarrassment, and yet it was not
wholly assumed. He was very boyish.

To the last and in his ripest years he escaped cynicism
and apathy. He thought and spoke with undivided
feeling from firm, unwavering principles. In many
ways he was "old-fashioned" and he deplored — more
than deplored — the slap-dash methods which pass
without censure in many of the popular books of the day :
the ungraceful and untrained plungings of that new school
of writers which violates every classic tradition and for
mula of the literary art, and flings its work at the reader
like so many entrails. Perhaps he was too fastidious
for his age; and, at all events, whatever others were
doing, he persistently lived up to an ideal which appraised
moral responsibility at no less a value than the symmetry
and orderliness which he strove for and achieved in his
own literary art. Stories of mean things and squalid
situations repelled him even when they were well told.

Those who listened to him laughed more than he did
himself. His funniest things were usually said gravely,
and rarely with any more consciousness than a smile
or a low chuckle revealed. They were always without
premeditation or effort.

We were lunching, as we often did, at Ober's, where
at one end of the restaurant there is a bar. A bon
vivant of our acquaintance appeared and, nodding to
us, took a drink and departed. Before we had done he
had been in three times. On the third visit Aldrich

remonstrated with him: "Look here, B I don't

believe in you any more. You're nothing but a pro
cession in the Boston Theatre."

He and his boys — the celebrated twins — were
walking down Tremont Street, and one of them, pointing

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

to the window of a surgical instrument shop, asked,
"Bric-a-bracs?"

"No, broken backs," Aldrich replied.

Another day he was taking me home with him to the
little house in Charles Street, which was filled from top
to bottom with rare and beautiful things. We passed
through Mount Vernon Street — much more dignified
and select then than it is now — and he waved his hand
at the substantial houses. "Now," he said, "you are in
England. You can imagine the people sitting in the
balconies and letting their h's drop with a crack to the
pavement below."

All sorts of chances were inspirations to his fancy and
cues to his humour. He was describing a very rough
voyage he had made from Europe when his eye caught
the colossal statue of George Washington in the Public
Garden. "Even that would have been seasick," he said.

It was impossible to be with him without sharing
his high spirits, and he gave more to his friends in his
letters and conversation than he reserved for his books.
The last time I saw him was at a dinner which we left
together on a snowy winter's night. Though he had
turned seventy he had preserved the jauntiness and grace
of youth. He seemed perennial. I was surprised when
in reply to a comment of mine made in all honesty —
"Aldrich, you are scarcely changed from what you were
thirty years ago" — he shook his head and said in a
sad voice, "I feel my years, old fellow."

It was hardly a month later that, in the West Indies,
I heard of his death, and, notwithstanding all those
seventy years my first feeling, after respect and sorrow
was that it had come before its time, and stolen one
who was still in his prime.

[140]

VIII
EDGAR FAWCETT

SPEAK of Edgar Fawcett to readers below middle
age now, and you will find that they know
nothing of him. Thirty years ago he was a
celebrity and one of the best known figures in New York,
a man familiar about town as well as in literary circles,
from whom came a steady flow of plays, novels, and books
of verse, all of which attracted attention, though opinions
as to their merit conflicted and ran to extremes. One
often wished that he would produce less or winnow more :
his garden needed weeding and his lilies and roses were
choked by the unplucked luxuriance of a rank fertility.
I never knew a man with less discrimination, and he often
saw more beauty in his cabbages than in the most ex
quisite of his flowers. Much of his poetry was ambitious
and the higher the flight attempted the less triumphant
was the achievement.

As a friend of mine said: "His longer things I wanted
to read only once, but his shorter ones I could read over
and over again."

What jewels the shorter ones are! He would not
have had it so, but they are the fragments by which his
name may be restored and perpetuated when nothing else
of his various and copious work endures. I cannot refrain
from quoting "To an Oriole" as an example of them:

How falls it, oriole, thou hast come to fly

In tropic splendour through our Northern sky?

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

At some glad moment was it nature's choic*
To dower a scrap of sunset with a voice?

Or did some orange tulip, flaked with black
In some forgotten garden, ages back,

Yearning toward Heaven until its wish was heard,
Desire unspeakably to be a bird?

And the reader will not be impatient with one more,
which, like the other, shows the daintiness and originality
of his fancy and his sense of verbal colour wedded with
music:

A HUMMING-BIRD

When the mild gold stars flower out

As the summer gloaming goes,
A dim shape quivers about

Some sweet, rich heart of a rose.

If you watch its fluttering poise,

From palpitant wings will steal
A hum like the eerie noise

Of an elfin spinning- wheel !

And then from the shape's vague sheen,

Quick lustres of blue will float,
That melt in luminous green

Bound a glimmer of, ruby throat!

But fleetly across the gloom

This tremulous shape will dart.
While searching for some fresh bloom.

To quiver about its heart.

Then you, by thoughts of it stirred.

Will dreamily question them:
** Is it a gem, half bird,

Or is it a bird, half gem ? " .

Such things as these he valued lightly. Longer and
more laboured things, narrative poems, Aand five-act

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EDGAR FAWCETT

plays in blank verse, the things the public would not
have, he gloried in. Oh, Edgar, generous but irascible
and unreasonable friend, I quake as I venture on this
appraisal! Raise not thy ghostly hands against me.
Faithful are the wounds of a friend.

I could quote many noble lines of his if there were
space, and I think they would gain rather than lose
by their detachment. He loved the polysyllabic, the
grandiose, and the sonorous. His thought and feeling
were often smothered by the decorations in which he
framed them.

I imperilled our friendship by candour which went
no farther than a gentle hint of redundance; but who is
there so modest that, much as he may protest his desire
for criticism, does not wince when he gets it? Of some
thing he read to me I confessed my thought that it was
redundant, and his reply, impetuous, unyielding, and
unapologetic as a defiant child's, was, "William, I love
redundancy!"

He had confidence in himself, and that is a possession
solacing only so long as it is impassive under the opin
ion of others who do not believe it to be justifiable.
Far from being impassive, Edgar was the most hypersen
sitive creature I ever knew, except Richard Mansfield,
and he let himself be angered even by the gibes of some
who were quite unworth his notice. It became a sport
to badger him, and he never refused to be drawn, but
played the game to the end at his own cost. He
wore himself out slapping at gnats and mosquitoes.
His lack of discrimination and of the sense of proportion
was his greatest weakness, and it involved his friends
as well as himself.

What excellence he always discovered in our work,

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

in which there were no flaws and nothing that could be
improved! Our lyrics were as good as "Songs Before
Sunrise," our elegiacs comparable with "In Memoriam,"
our sonnets like Landor's, and our novels — one of them
which had a bit of success for a month (where is it now?
it vanished like a breath on a mirror) was "better than
Thackeray at his best!" We listened with smiles, but
were not fatuous enough to be deluded, though we never
doubted, nor do I doubt now, that what looked so much
like egregious flattery was uttered by him in unquestion
ing faith and sincerity.

He was commonly spoken of as a poet, but his novels
outnumbered his books of verse. At least three of them
have documentary value to any student of social condi
tions in New York, and I think that with the one ex
ception of Howells's "A Hazard of New Fortunes," his
"An Ambitious Woman" is the best novel of New York
life ever written. It is a record of humanity undistorted
by the conventional exigencies of story telling, and satis
fying enough without them. The two others — "A
Hopeless Case" and "A Gentleman of Leisure" — are
slighter, but they also are faithful pictures of their
period. "An Ambitious Woman" is, in my opinion,
his masterpiece, and neglected as it is now, undeservedly
neglected, I feel sure that some day or other it will be
recovered. If not sooner, it may turn up in the time
to come when revolution has thrown this republic into
the hands of a dictator, and the excesses of the dictator
have led to a constitutional monarchy. An antiquary
exploring the ruins of the public library may pick up a
singed and crumpled copy and rejoice in his discovery
for the light it will throw on the way some of us lived
in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. I recom-

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EDGAR FAWCETT

mend others meanwhile to see for themselves how good
it is, though probably to the new generation it will already
seem old-fashioned.

He knew society, not as an observer from the outside,
but as one who has a place in it. Had he chosen he might
have given himself up to the glittering but unprofitable
waste of fashionable life. He was the son of a gentle
man, a substantial scholar, Spencerian in his philosophy,
highly cultivated, restless intellectually, urbane in man
ner and speech, with all the unconscious ease and polish
of an assured social position. Nevertheless, his means
were small, and he stood in need of the earnings of his
pen. Had he been rich his temperament would not
have allowed him to be an idler. He seethed with ideas
and, travelling or at home, at all hours, early and late,
sick or well, he found his chief pleasure in that varied
work which flowed from him without intermission, now
running clear, and then, as was inevitable, thickening
and stumbling in its haste. He always had a note-book
in his pocket, and out it came, not for mere memoranda,
but for things begun and finished while we waited, such
as a sonnet composed within ten minutes of our arrival
at the top of the Righi when we were touring together
in Switzerland, or another sonnet on Austerlitz (both of
them creditable), which he excogitated within as short
a time amidst the hubbub of embarkation at Liverpool.
Facility was his bane, and overwork his ruin. His
querulousness was but the outcry of his abused and pro
testing nerves, which suffered not only from the number
of his working hours but also from the fact that those
hours were nocturnal.

I called at his lodgings one day. The floor and the
table in his parlour were littered with books pulled from

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

their shelves the previous night - - the books of Tenny
son, Swinburne, Keats, Shelley, and Baudelaire, English
and French, the books he admired opened at the pages
he liked to repeat. The sun creeping through the drawn
blinds discovered nothing of the day. Everything be
tokened the previous night and its occupations, the
glasses, the ashes of tobacco, the choice of the books.
I surmised congenial company parting only with the
dawn — Maurice Barrymore, very likely, Frank Saltus,
and George Parsons Lathrop. My resounding knock
on the bedroom door had to be repeated before it told.
Then a thunderous and indignant voice cried out from
within, "Go away. Go away! How dare anybody
disturb me at this hour of the night."

I looked in, and there he was in bed, prepared for ven
geance on the disturber, furious till he recognized me.
A small table within his reach held a pencil and a pad;
he had been writing even after that prolonged causerie.
He was a handsome man, of florid complexion and jet
black hair, with a head and jowl suggestive of tenacity
of purpose and obstinacy, beardless but heavily mous-
tached. His eyes in contrast with his other features
were like those of a girl's, an exquisite violet.

"Good heavens, William! What's the matter? What has
happened to bring you here in the middle of the night? "

I looked at my watch : noon had passed, but the infor
mation did not startle him.

"Those fellows stayed quite late," he yawned, and with
a smile he handed me the verses he had jotted down before
going to sleep:

TO A NEWSPAPER CRITIC

For blood, an adder's gall;
For brain, a gnat's weak hate;

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EDGAR FAWCETT

For heart, a pebble small;
For soul, "a whiskey straight."

For conscience, pelf, and hire;
For pride, a donkey's tether;
For ink, a gutter's mire;
For pen, a goose's feather.

He read them himself ore rotundo, and they put him
in good humour at once.

A meagre breakfast satisfied him, and then, day after
day, headache or no headache, after the valeting of a
devoted servant, he went forth to work as regularly
and persistently as an industrious mechanic, finding
both anodyne and stimulant in his appointed task.
For his scenes in fashionable life he needed no prepara
tion, and when he was not at his desk he explored the
town and its environs in search of material for those
humbler scenes and characters which he reproduced
with the effect of convincing intimacy.

A wanderer myself, and on a similar mission in those
days, I often met him in out-of-the-way places, following,
for instance, dusty and squalid funerals over the swamps
and sand hills of Greenpoint; in the slums of Mulberry
Street and Chatham Square, and among the old Elysian
Fields of Hoboken, green and sylvan then, vanished now,
where Aaron Burr despatched Alexander Hamilton.
You could see him sitting on the benches of Stuyvesant
Square and Central Park, usually with a tablet and a
pencil in his hands, a dignified and dreamy figure at whom
policemen and nursemaids glanced curiously, but with
out suspicion, while now and then he made pictures for
the children who flocked around him, confident that he
was their friend and a most accomplished and delightful
person.

[147]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Poor, tired, impatient, splenetic Edgar! While you
were his friend you were superhuman, and he never
wearied of proclaiming your excellence. Any criticism
of you he resented as vehemently as criticism of himself.
You became interested in yourself through his interest
in you. He encouraged and inspired you. But unfor
tunately he took offence easily, and when that happened
the little rift Within the lute could never be repaired.
Old friendships once broken, were broken forever. He
could not forgive.

Without effort he was a voluminous correspondent,
and even when he was tired he could find relaxation and
refreshment in writing to his friends. Out of a bundle of
those letters which flowed as easily as his talk I choose
a few which illustrate the liveliness of his mind and the
variety of his interests.

I had spoken to him about a silly young fellow who had
become entangled with a married woman, and this was
his reply:

Love is a trickster; he makes us cry out at our wounds, and then flies
away, leaving us regretful that they are so suddenly healed. A passion is
the most mysterious and delicious thing in the world; it is also the most
ridiculous and trivial. Schopenhauer reduces it all to a blind, indeterminate
will, which accomplishes its results in plants, animals, and men with an
equally reckless tyranny. I don't know that he is not right. Love is so
much and so little! I once doted on a girl. I used to take to bed violets
that she gave me, and go to sleep with them pressed against my lips. One
afternoon I went to see her. She was distraite — unwell. I kissed her as
men kiss women they would die for, and begged her to tell me why she was
so wretchedly ennuyee. It was a tooth. She had a bad tooth. My love
died, somehow, on the instant. I could never forgive that toothache.
If she had committed some dreadful crime I might have forgiven it; but I
looked into her mouth and saw a discoloured tooth — and love died !

Love to me is the most sublime and most ludicrous of human senti
ments. But thrice fortunate is to love as he does. Let him not

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EDGAR FAWCETT

bemoan his fate. Let him exult in it, and treasure every pang it gives
him. They are all exquisite pangs; they draw him to the very stars them
selves; put sweet odours into the oil of his midnight lamp, and line his
post-prandial slippers with a fur stolen from the throats of nightingales.
Let him appreciate his despair, for its death will leave a more bitter void
than its life. Happy the man who can touch a woman's garment inad
vertently, and tremble as he does so! The impulse of self-renunciation, the
hopeless desire, the stolen meeting, the clandestine kiss — they are worth a
whole century of apathetic satiety. Let him be glad while he has the
wine to drink; it will soon enough turn to water. Alas! it always does

turn to water — and sometimes to wormwood! Some day will regret

his present misery and be willing to give a decade of contentment for a day
of its recurrence. He should not fear the wound; it is always a flesh wound.
It is the remedy he should dread — cold as death itself — which heals it.
The well is flanked with Athenian sculptures; the golden cup hangs over
it by a silver chain. Drink, and you thirst no more. But thirst is better.
The longer you drink, the more the enchanted forests fade, and suddenly
you find that you stand in a gray, blank dawn, drinking from — well, a
town pump! And by the way, in America, at least, married women will
exact much from their lovers, but never concede. They like one on one's
knees; they are complaisant, but rarely truly passionate. And they are
sometimes strangely treacherous. As a rule they love you at their feet, but
when you rise they are too apt to laugh at the way your trousers bag at
the knees!

Here is another of pleasant reminiscences:

I have a happier word to say for the second day of the Authors' Readings.
Howells and I had a pleasant little chat, and afterward at a dinner party at
Courtlandt Palmer's I met Julian Hawthorne and George Lathrop and his
wife. At the dinner we all agreed that the Readings had been a great suc
cess. Howells was admirable. On second day he read a passage or chapter
from what he told us was an "unwritten novel." The humour was even
better and more gently persuasive than on the previous day. It was very in
teresting to me to note how its quiet yet keen points "took" when delivered
behind the footlights. It confirmed a theory of mine that American audi
ences are anxious for good literary things in the theatre. Augustin Daly is
with me, here, and yet not quite with me. ... If you or any of the
few artists like you, chose to do anything fresh in comedy for Daly, you would
be sure of a most appreciative and courteous welcome. He wrote me the
other day from Philadephia: If you do a comedy for me this summer you

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

shall suffer no loss. Is not that nice? — But I somehow feel that I am losing
what slight power I ever had. Late midnight writing kills me, and day-
writing seems to cast a critical glare upon my work, emphasizing its worst
faults. . . . Mark Twain was immense at the Readings The house
was in continuous roars while he spoke. Beecher was the only poor one;
he read, and read in a hesitant, senile, almost maundering way. At the
Irving dinner he had made so brilliant a speech that I was prepared to be
charmed on Wednesday. "Non omnis moriar " applies to him! — and yet
does it? He will not wholly die, yet will he live longer than to the end of
this century? His gifts are oratoric, and he has no litera scripta. Those
are what tell in the matter of immortality. John Boyle O'Reilly simply
charmed me. Don't you like him very much? I had never seen him before,
and he impressed me as so handsome, so graceful, so full of fire and force.
He read some very brilliant and poetic epigrams, and a long, sombre, but
occasionally very eloquent poem called "The City Streets. " He rushed off
in the middle of the entertainment, or I should certainly have sought an
introduction to him. Lady Wilde raved over him in London, and I can
understand it. I think Lytton's poem ("Glenaveril") perfectly awful!
Not a ray of the old sweet, dulcet- voiced Owen Meredith in it! (Pardon
my hash of metaphors !) It is laboured, forced, and ridiculous in its diatribe
against all the Liberals and its eager exaltation of the Jingoes. The idea
of putting Lord Salisbury above Gladstone! But the poem, in other ways,
is essentially artificial and shallow. I never was more disappointed in my
life. Quantum mutatus ab illo, &c.

His rhymed satire, "The Buntling Ball," had flared
into popularity and it was soon followed by another
book in the same dancing Gilbertian measure.

I shall now tell you what I have not told you before. Besides a number
of short stories and six or seven poems, I wrote this summer "The New King
Arthur," and two new comedies for Daly! The first of these, "Thin Ice,"
he sat down on so mercilessly, demanding such radical alterations, that
I hopelessly threw it aside. The second, "Swains and Sweethearts,"
he likes better, but has just written me that I must invent two new, origi
nal, and startling situations in it for the ends of first and second acts (it is
three acts in all) before he will contract for it. And even then the whole
play must be gone over, with changes which he will indicate! Well, what
can I do but try to satisfy him? Besides, I don't know that he is not per
fectly right. He ought to be, with his immense experience. I wrote him
to-day that I would do all I could — whatever that may mean. I know

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EDGAR FAWCETT

him so well that I can read between the lines of his last letter, and perceive
that S. & S. has in a manner "caught on" with him. But don't you pity
me, dear boy, in the distracting task which yet remains to be accomplished?

The truth is, the way of the American dramatist is bitterly hard beyond
all recognized calculation. It is not merely that he must fight the European
and English market, squarely and fairly. He must, indeed, do considerably
more than this. He must fight the best work of the best authors now across
the Atlantic — work that has been thoroughly tried on transpontine audi
ences and not found wanting in any essential of solid popularity. Is it
not disheartening? You've no idea, dear William, of the immense "sur
vival of the fittest" which goes on with Daly in the production of such plays
as "Love on Crutches," "A Night Qff," "The Passing Regiment," &c.,
&c. I myself have seen the stacks and piles of translated plays which he
possesses. Hundreds scarcely express their quantity. Everything is sent
him that Berlin or Vienna sees — and those two cities have not the long
runs of London, Paris, and New York. Besides this, the Vienna comedy-
theatre (I forget its German name, which you probably remember) is con
sidered by many people superior to the Comedie Francaise. This is the sort
of pick that Daly has. Why the deuce should my plays stand any chance
with him, or with anybody?

Yet Daly, in his way, is fair and just and discriminating beyond all other
New York managers, and I firmly believe (indeed, I know) that he would
rather put on an American success than a foreign one. Still, he must go
according to his lights, whether they are torches or tallow dips.

I myself am as utterly humble about my dramatic work as it is possible
to conceive. I have tested the tremendous chance of the whole thing, and
cannot, however much I rack my poor brain, hit upon any ghost of a math
ematical formula by means of which the public is to be hit. "The False
Friend" was a pure stroke of luck. I see that now, tho' I didn't then.
Because Cazauran cut and slashed it, gutting whole scenes, this was no reason
why it should take. For Cazauran's judgment, in the "Fatal Letter,"
in "Far from the Madding Crowd," and in several other things which he
did for the Union Square Theatre after Palmer left it, has been proved thor
oughly fallible. Ah, well ! if it were not for the big rewards attendant upon
a successful play, who would dream of writing one? That, however, is the
very thing, I fancy, which is preventive of good plays being written here
— that, and the monstrous extraneous pressure of foreign preferment.

In another he was, at my request, autobiographical.

I remember so well my first appearance in print. It occurred at Rye
before I was graduated from college; I think in 1865. My father had for

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

some time taken the deepest interest in Spiritualism (a "fad," by-the-by,
which he never entirely outgrew, and which haunted him, in a disappointed,
half -disillusioned way, even to the hour of his death), and he had for some
time subscribed to the Banner of Light. You recollect the paper, perhaps?
It was the jeer of my mother and sisters, who were never tired of reminding
my father, with ironies either direct or covert, that he had put himself under
its rather disreputable cegis. It abounded in " trance lectures " and in "com
munications" from spectral celebrities like Poe, Shelley, and for all I know
even your own beloved Thackeray. Well, one day I wrote a copy of verses
beginning,

Of all the months in the happy year,
No fitter birth-month could he choose

When May smiles out from April's tear.
And blossoms in her countless hues. . . .

I forget the rest, but "he" was a baby, born in the first stanza under these
highly flowery circumstances, and dying in the last stanza under, if I mistake
not, the most sombrely autumnal ones. In fear and trembling, dreaming
only of fame and not at all of pelf, I sent my verses as a contribution to the
Banner of Light, accompanying them with some sort of pseudonym. A week
or two later they appeared, and on my word of honour as a confirmed scrib
bler, the joy and thrilling pride which I felt when I saw them has never
since been equalled. I know how commonplace this is; every author is
always saying the same thing whenever he becomes biographical. But I
can't resist recording those feelings, nevertheless, of my own especial juve
nile case. I regarded the publication of those verses as a great state secret.
Nobody must know of it. And so, like the silly ostrich that I was, I hid
my head in the sand with a vengeance; I tore, or cut, the little poem from the
paper. My father came up from town, eager for his treasured Banner.
The mutilated page filled him with inquiries, and I fear somewhat irritated
ones. Some one had seen me clutching a Banner of Inght agitatedly and
hurrying off with it. Circumstantial evidence crushed me. There was the
mangled cherry tree, and the culpable little G. W. was not far off. And so,
with tears of haughty shame, I was forced at once to confess my theft, and
my distinction. I recall thinking the latter a disclosure far too lightly
valued. But from that hour I was a marked boy; I had not merely made
verses; I had got them into print. As you know, I have never lived down
the odium; it has clung to me most adhesively for over twenty unconscion
able years.

152]

IX
MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

TWO later friends of mine were Mark Twain and
E. C. Stedman.
For several months "Mark," as his intimates
were allowed to call him, lived at The Players in one
of the two best rooms, which had been occupied at the
opening of the club by Edwin Booth and Lawrence
Barrett; and I, then the managing editor of the North
American Review, went there one morning to ask him
whether he would write an article for us on the origin
of the most famous of his stories — "The Celebrated
Jumping Frog." We were fellow members, and I had
already known him several years.

He pointed amiably to a chair, in which I sat while
he paced the floor and puffed at a slow-burning pipe,
using it much as an artist uses a brush or his hand in
swings and curves when he describes the tremendous
things he intends to do with an almost untouched canvas.
He talked more slowly than usual — I never heard him
talk fast — and at intervals stopped altogether, now
resting midway, then striding from wall to wall, shaking
his head at what he disagreed with or nodding in con
currence.

All the typographical dashes in the printer's case
would be insufficient if I used them to indicate the long-
drawn pauses between his words and sentences. Every
syllable was given its full value, distinctly and sonorously.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

To me his voice was beautiful. It was not a laughing
voice, or a light-hearted voice, but deep and earnest
like that of one of the graver musical instruments, rich
and solemn, and in emotion vibrant and swelling with
its own passionate feeling.

"I didn't write that story as fiction," he said, after a
delay, tirelessly but slowly moving his head from side
to side; "I didn't write it as fiction," he repeated in
the way he had of repeating everything he desired you
to understand he stood by, and that there could be no
mistake about, "I wrote it "

To and fro again and a sweep of his arm. A pause
in the middle of the room.

"I wrote it as — not as fiction, not as fancy, not out
of imagination — I wrote it as a matter, a matter of
h-i-s-t-o-r-y. I can remember now at this very minute,
I can remember now, right here, just how that story
happened, every incident in it."

Here there was another pause, as if the curtain had
been drawn on an interlude in a play. He never under
any circumstances was precipitous, or to be driven.
Nobody could ever hasten him out of his excogitations.
His face was serious, reflective, and reminiscent. That
was its prevalent expression. I knew him for nearly
thirty years, and cannot remember hearing him laugh
in all that time, even when he must have been amused
and others were laughing around him — Ho wells, for
instance, bubbling with the freshest, merriest, sincerest
and most contagious laugh in the world; Ho wells,
who, though so different in many ways, was one of the
dearest and most congenial of his friends, Howells and
Aldrich, both of whom he especially delighted in. A
smile, an engaging, communicative, penetrative smile,

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

which wrapped one in its own liquid and suffusing satis
faction, was his nearest approach to risibility, save per
haps a shrug or a scarcely audible chuckle.

I could see that some unexpected thing was coming,
while I listened to those clear but halting sentences,
which dropped from him like pebbles breaking the silence
of a lonely pool. His face, that aquiline, almost accipi-
tral face, was as grave as if life and death had been in
the balance.

"Well," he drawled, "what do you suppose happened
last night? Don't be in a hurry. It's no good being
in a hurry."

I did not venture a guess, and he emitted a cloud from
the reviving pipe as if to symbolize the impenetrability
of his mystery. Again he paced the room before he
explained himself.

"A fellow sitting next to me at dinner last night said
to me, 'How old do you suppose that story of yours about
the Jumping Frog is, Mark?' I stopped to think, quite
in earnest, and I said, recalling all the circumstances,
'That story is just about forty -five years old. It happened
in Calaveras County in the spring of 1840.' 'No, it
isn't/ said he, 'no, it isn't. It's more than that; it's
two thousand years old.' And since then that fellow
has shown me a book, a Greek text-book, arid
there it is, there it is, my Jumping Frog, in Bceotia
t-w-o t-h-o-u-s-a-n-d years ago."

Two thousand years never seemed so long to me, nor
could they have sounded longer to anybody than they
did in his enunciation of them, which seemed to make
visible and tangible all the mystery, all the remoteness,
and all the awe of that chilling stretch of time. His
way of uttering them and his application of them often

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

gave the simplest words which he habitually used a
pictorial vividness, a richness of suggestion, a fulness of
meaning with which genius alone could endue them.

The mystery of the Boeotian was soon solved. He
had been translated into the Greek text-book by Prof.
Henry Sidgwick, Mr. Balfour's brother-in-law, and
History was restored to the pedestal on which she had
tottered. I got the article I wanted, and a very good
price was paid for it.

Mark was not an easy contributor to manage. He
knew his own value, and had no unbusiness-like indiffer
ence to the substantial recognition of it by editors and
publishers. He would have his pound of flesh, and in
sisted on it as strongly as he insisted that no changes
should be made in what he wrote, though occasionally
elisions would have saved him from the criticisms of
fastidious readers, especially from the criticisms of
women. I believe the only critic he ever listened to
with patience, and respected and obeyed, was his wife.
How mistaken were the people who, not knowing him,
imagined that everywhere and on all occasions his at
titude and point of view were those of the jester! I
never knew a more earnest man than he was, or one whose
aroused indignation was so overwhelming. When anger
moved him you could see his lean figure contract and his
eyes ominously screw themselves into their sockets.
Every fibre in him quivered, and for the moment his voice
became acid and sibilant and out of tune — almost a
whine. Then he would let himself out in a break,
like that of a dam unable to hold the flood, in language
as candid and unshrinking as the vernacular of the
Elizabethans. Epithet would be piled on epithet, one fol
lowing another with cumulative vigour and distinctness,

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

and the disclosing and illuminative effect of explosives.
And not a word missed its mark, not a word seemed
superfluous or exchangeable for any other word;
each fitted the use he made of it as a cartridge fits a
rifle or a revolver; each told. When he disliked anybody
or anything, whether it was the Czar, General Funs ton,
Leopold of Belgium, apologists for Shelley, or the Rev
erend Mr. Sabin, whose refusal to bury an actor led to
the glory of "The Little Church Round the Corner," .he
would not compromise or extenuate what offended him
for months or years afterward, if at all. It took years
to soften the bitterness which while fresh was implacable.
Nor were his animosities without justification. Hypocrisy,
deceit, sanctimoniousness, and cruelty were among the
cardinal sins for him. You might think he had forgotten
particular instances of them, but he would surprise you
by springing them back on your memory, in moods and
circumstances to which they had no relation, in biting
phrases which showed how they still rankled.

His attitude toward the ordinary foibles of humanity
was parentally indulgent and benevolent. He admired
women and met them with all the grace and complaisance
of an ancient courtier, and he loved children and all
things simple, beautiful, and true. His affability ex
posed him to flocks of bores, and out of sheer courtesy
he would endure them and hide his impatience while
they flattered themselves that they were impressing
him and establishing an intimacy, the legend of which
should be boasted of while they lived and cherished by
all their descendants when they were gone. He would
smile on them, wag his head and murmur acquiescence
in their talk, and when he at last released himself by
some ingenious strategy or through the intervention of

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a friend, who had been watching his unmistakable and
comically pitiful signs of weariness, they would fly
off to repeat what he hadn't said or jumble what he
had, and ever thereafter speak of him as "Mark." It
was a lesson in saintly fortitude to observe him and
hear the unfathomable sigh which came out on his
escape from them.

Usually there was no end to his patience, but I remem
ber his losing it at a little dinner given at The Players,
when by some mischance he was seated next to an im
possible person, a guest, not a member of the club, who
may be called Bounder. Bounder gave him no rest, but
Clemens stood the strain for a long time without a protest,
and merely swayed his head in the leisurely, half -drowsy,
ponderous way an elephant has. That was another
little peculiarity of his. Some of us could see that his
restraint could not last much longer, however, and pres
ently he beckoned the host, much to that gentleman's
bewilderment, into the ante-room.

"David," he said when he got him there, "David
— do you love me, David?" His voice quavered
with pathos; it was a voice that always had more
pathos in it than mirth: it shook with the melan
choly of trees in the wind, and pleaded. As I
have already intimated, it was seldom he revealed
any consciousness of his own humour. "Do you love
me, David?"

David was the late Mr. David Alexander Munro,
a close and dear friend of his and of all of us. "Love you?
Of course I do, old boy. What's the matter?"

"Then, for the love of heaven, if you love me, save me
from Bounder, save me from Bounder, save me from
Bounder!" repeated thrice, like the tragic wail of a

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

soul doomed and immured in the nethermost depths of
despair.

Difficult explanations had to be made, and another
than Mark sacrificed for the rest of the evening to the
confident and voluble Mr. Bounder.

He always conveyed to me the sense of music; not
lively music con vivace, but the slower movements like
the andante of a symphony. There were exquisite ca
dences in his voice, and his gestures harmonized with
them. He did not sparkle as Aldrich sparkled; he glowed.
Have you seen Vesuvius when quiescent, throbbing in
the dark, its ruddy fire diminishing one moment and the
next burning scarlet like the end of a Gargantuan cigar?
In that one could find by a stretch of fancy a resemblance
to his passages from coolness to heat. He was more
like a frigate than a torpedo boat, and he deliberated
before he touched his guns

He confessed to me once that at gatherings when
speech-making was expected, he preferred to do his part
after others had done theirs, for what was said before made
opportunities for him later on. An instance of this oc
curred at a breakfast in London given during his last
visit to England. Augustine Birrell, the Irish secretary,
preceded him, and referring to the demands made on
him in what is probably the most irritating and laborious
of all parliamentary offices, declared, "I am sure I don't
know how I got here."

That gave Clemens the chance he had waited for,
and he lost no time in making the most of it. No other
American who ever visited London received half the
applause bestowed on him; not Henry Ward Beecher,
Doctor Holmes, General Grant or even Mr. Choate.

"Mr. Birrell," he began very slowly and with a more

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expansive smile than usual, "Mr. Birrell has just said
he doesn't know how he got here/' Then he bent over
the Irish secretary, and looked into his wine glasses.
"Doesn't know how he got here" — very significantly.
Mr. Birrell was puzzled behind his spectacles, and every
body was on the qui vive just as the speaker liked to have
them; it was a part of his game.

"Well, he hasn't — had — anything — " a prolonged
pause — "anything — more to — drink — since he came,
and we'll at least see that he gets home all right."

The inflection breathed encouragement; it said by im
plication what many more words could not have said
better,, that Mr. Birrell was in the hands of a self-
sacrificing friend who would look out for him. It surely
was not the sort of humour they were used to, but bishops
in their frocks, deans, cabinet ministers, and judges -
they, as well as the rest of us, yielded to it in uncon
trollable laughter, while the speaker demurely shook his
head as if he were compassionating the frailty of human
ity. Nor was this the sort of humour, accepted though it
was as the essence of him, by which he should be measured.
Sunshine in water is not a gauge of its depths. Only
those who knew him well discovered his profundity,
and how impassioned and militant (a little quixotic,
too,) he could be in good causes.

I don't know how Stedman could have ever had an
enemy, though he was an outspoken and combative
man of strong opinions. You might differ with him —
sometimes you had to — but you came out of an encoun
ter with him probably second-best, yet amused and
laughing rather than hurt or resentful. You respected
his convictions, and could not fail to admire the vehe
mence with which he declared them and fought for them.

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

Most of his convictions were enthusiasms, if closely
analyzed, and he happily found the swans outnumbering
the geese in the world around him.

If you were his friend that was enough to prove
excellence of some kind already in existence, and to
justify the most flattering horoscopes of greater excel
lencies in the future. Was your son going to sea?
Then he was sure to become a Farragut. In the army, a
Grant. In science, a Darwin or a Tyndall. In litera
ture, a Hawthorne, a Poe, a Prescott, or a Lowell. And
you ! What encouragement he always gave — finding
some grace or subtlety of imagination in your little story,
or felicitous cadences in your little poem, which others
neither perceived nor heard ! He was, like Fawcett, much
too kind to be a good critic of those he knew, and yet in
his praise there was no taint of the conscious flattery
which speaks to please, with a tongue in its cheek. Of
things hopeless he was silent, of things imperfect but not
without merit he selected what was best and expatiated
on that, shutting his eyes to the less admirable or alto
gether valueless remainder, like one who with a tray of
jewels of various qualities before him says not what he
thinks of the whole, but, ignoring the spurious and
defective, picks out for approval the one or two pieces
which he knows to be right.

Never had any man more sympathy with youth and
ambition; nor was it passive sympathy, but the sympathy
which patiently proves itself in such practical service
as the surrender of time for reading and counsel.

One of the penalties of fame, I surmise, is the number
of one's followers. Every tyro hurries his first book,
more precious to him than a first child — his heart and soul
breathing between its covers — as an offering from below

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

to the oracle on the summit, and alas! often changes his
opinion and recants his faith when that oracle, too busy
or too bored, makes no reply. The oracle may mean
well and wish well, and try to do what is desired of him,
but the offerings come in such profusion that they fill
the temple and threaten to suffocate the receiver. No
one could have been busier than Stedman, no one could
have withstood as he did the multiple strains of business
and literature that he was subject to all his life. As is
well known, he was for many years a member of the Stock
Exchange, and could enter his study only after a trying
day's struggle in that maelstrom which, as it regurgi
tates, leaves men of mightier brawn than his limp and
exhausted. Learned societies, national societies, and
philanthropic societies besought him for speeches or
official services, and, tired though he was, he yielded to
their persuasion. Calamity befell him with a destructive
weight and poignancy which made his survival seem
scarcely less than miraculous. Nothing could extin
guish his splendid spirit, nothing impeded his unfaltering
activity and energy, and up to the last it was seldom
that any little book ever reached him, utterly unknown
though its author might be, which he did not look at to
see if there was not somewhere in its drab a thread of gold
that he could recognize in a letter of acknowledgment —
one of those crisply-penned, gothic-handed letters,
which he poured out like a man, or more like a woman,
shut up in a wilderness of remoteness and seclusion
and seeking relief in intimacy and communication.

A mere acknowledgment — "I shall read it with great
pleasure," or the old equivocation "I shall lose no time
in reading it" - is usually as much as the shaky sender
of the virgin pages expects or gets. Imagine then what

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

it meant to him to receive one of Stedman's letters, as
he was sure to do if he had any promise or gift at all,
showing that the book, moist from the press, had been
read from the first line to the last, and sifted for what was
good in it and not for what was bad, and that a master
high en Parnassus had caught in it the gleam of a jewel,
the scent of a flower, or a ripple of melody !

Time and time again young fellows have come to me
flushed with pride, firmer on their feet and with strength
ened confidence, because each had in his pockets, or
more likely in his hands, such a letter from Stedman,
which he pressed me to read while he watched its effect
on me with the expression which needed no speech for
its interpretation : * What do you say to that ? That's
what he thinks of it. Now, perhaps, you II be civil."
And civil one had to be; it would have been unkind
to reduce by a single degree the glow of what was so
plainly regarded as marking the matriculation of the
poet from his shell. One danger the happy youth was
liable to, however. He might meet another of his own
sort and, showing the letter to him have it matched
by another letter which the second youth had himself
received from Stedman. In such a contingency values
fell, and both poets probably decided that in the other's
case Stedman had lost his usual perspicacity and over
done the praise.

One night at The Players, Stedman complained of
the burden of letter-writing imposed on him by young
authors.

"Isn't it your own fault?" It was his own fault,
and I added, "You've always been prodigal in that way."

He swooped down upon me like a thunder-bolt, as
hough he would annihilate me there and then, blameless

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

as I knew myself to be. One had to be used to him
to endure his impetuous rushes without losing one's
breath. The word "aquiline" might have been made
for him: it describes his features and his temperament.
As he descended, the shock would stagger, unless one
knew enough from past experience to be reassured that,
however strongly the wings might beat, talons and beak
would not be used.

"You are the fellow who is responsible for that!" he
cried. "You've been spreading that story about me
nearly all your life, and see what it's done for me ! Every
fellow that lisps sends his book to me."

His eyes flashed reproach and he thumped the table.
He seemed to gather himself together for a spring at
me, and the next moment he laughed and shook his
head — not at me, but at himself.

"Well, I suppose I am a fool to do it; but it's aston
ishing what a lot of good work those boys are doing."

What a superb head it was, so handsome, so massive
and so noble! WTiile he was active and unbent, with
the step, the gaze, the complexion, and the uprightness
of a young man, his beard and the hair of his head were
as silvery as sunlit snow. He seemed like a youth
made up for Santa Glaus or for a mosaic patriarch of
incredible years.

One night at the same club Mark Twain was lament
ing his own frostiness.

"You haven't got a single gray hair,*' he said to one
of us, nodding pathetically. "And you only two or
three, and you --well, not many," indicating each of
us in turn. "Not one of you is like me, all white, no
other colour."

Then he braced up with the cheerfulness drawn from

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

the comparison. "But if Stedman were only here I'd
look like a boy," and with that thought his mood
changed.

The familiar epigram repeats itself: "The only people
who have no time to spare are those who have nothing
to do." Stedman had time for everything. Even in
the old Stock Exchange period, when other brokers
could barely spare ten minutes for a sandwich, he
would have little luncheon parties at his office, and
there, with all the noises of Wall Street and Broad Street
splashing in through the open windows in warm weather,
the bellowings of prices from the hot and struggling
mob on the floor, and the chimes of Trinity playing
"Rock of Ages," one could meet R. H. Stoddard,
Charles Dudley Warner, Aldrich, Edgar Fawcett, Gilder,
and other literary and artistic friends of his, as they
talked with him of the latest things from Browning,
Tennyson, Longfellow, and Swinburne. Strange and
dramatic contrasts are not uncommon in that sordid
neighbourhood, but nothing could have been more sur
prising or incongruous than that band of poets engaged
in chaff and criticism — Stoddard brusque and sledge-
hammerish (the blacksmith he had been still asserting
himself in his manner); Gilder, with his fawn-like eyes,
glowing with enthusiasm; Fawcett, elegant, appealing,
and inquisitive; Aldrich, provocative and full of laugh-
making quips, and the host mercurial, emphatic, and
plain of speech. They might have been picnicking on
Parnassus beyond the reach of other sounds than their
own voices and the interludes of Pan.

At this time, too, Stedman's business was large and
pressing, and he was acquiring one of those fortunes
which were afterward lost through no fault of his own.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

I met him one day on the steps leading into the
Exchange.

"What are you doing here?" he said. "Can't you
read the inscription up there: 'All hope abandon ye who
enter here.' No, it's not quite that, but it ought to be. "

"And you? "I asked.

"Oh, we have just finished eating our house," he
replied, with a shrug, meaning, of course, that he had
got to the end of money raised on some of his real estate.

But he was always cheerful and always generous.
Never was there a more dapper figure than his, so mili
tary in its bearing, so upright, so compact, so alert, so
well groomed, and so compliant to the latest fashions.
There was no Tennysonian untidiness about him, no
proclamation of the poetic scorn of convention. You
could easily have mistaken him for somebody distin
guished in the army; that would have been your earliest
and most convincing inference; that, or a guess that he
might be a benevolent and refined plutocrat with a lean
ing toward art and books. He had every social grace, and
society wanted him and courted him, but he preferred
the company of his fellow literary men and women.
I have said how at a little dinner of authors he, glowing
at the end of it, exclaimed: "Haven't we had a good time!
We are never so happy as when we are among ourselves ! "

Blow after blow fell upon him without disabling him
or disheartening him. Stunned, he recovered. Out of
darkness the sun reappeared in roseate dawns. The
disappointments of to-day left a keener appetite for what
was sure to come to-morrow. The past might gloom, but
the future glittered. He was full of ingenious projects,
and talked them up to the skies, filling those who listened
with his own confidence and buoyancy. Any hint that

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

there might be difficulties in the way was impatiently
derided, and it would have been better for the utterer
of it to have held his tongue.

When Stedman chose New Castle, N. H., for a sum
mer home, some of his friends thought it would be rather
inconvenient for him if he had to make such frequent
trips to New York as he expected. But he would not
have it so. The journey to Boston, and then across
Boston, and then to Portsmouth, seemed much too far
to us for frequent repetitions. But it was not long at
all to him. He avowed that it was one of the easiest
things in the world: his imagination produced a special
timetable for him, and even built an air-line which,
though it never materialized for others, served him and
pleased him as if it had cut the distance in halves. That
was his way. He touched things with a wand of fairy-
dom, and lo ! for him and for us they were transformed
into whatever we most desired them to be.

What a house it was which his romance and poetry
found expression in on that rocky shore where the Pis-
cataqua meets the open sea and the Isles of Shoals
mingle with the mirage of opaline mornings! So solid,
so weathered, so appropriate to its surroundings! It
looks as if it had stood there forever; as if its stains
had come through the wear of ages; as if the sea and wind
had spent themselves upon it century after century,
making it their own and endowing it with natural dignity
and ruggedness. It might have been upheaved out of
the gray bowlders among which it is rooted; and, indeed,
unmissed from the tumbled strand, many of them have
gone into it. The shingles might have been split from
driftwood drawn hither and thither from the equator
to the poles. One could not, with much ingenuity, pic-

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

ture a more ideal home for a poet, and he loved it and
let his fancy run free in its shelter. He had a den in
which one became possessed by the spirit of ancient days.
The ghosts of smugglers, pirates, and buccaneers floated
in clouds of tobacco after dark; and while the wind shook
the sash, and the waves splashed and moaned on the
beach, and we rattled off old ballads and romances, a
kettle would be hung from a crane over the open hearth,
its promise confirmed by lemons and sugar. Then he
would stealthily fetch from a mysterious locker an an
tique demijohn, full, not of vulgar gin, brandy,or whiskey,
but of honest rum, which, judging from its mildness and
flavour, might have been left there by the salty wraiths
who in the flesh one easily believed had come and gone
on many tides for contraband adventures.

No aeronaut ever yet scaled the air and trafficked
with the stars as he did in his sanguine flights. One
of the last times I encountered him was late one evening
in Gramercy Park, when he was coming away from, and
I going into, The Players. He at once proposed a
magnum opus — I had heard of others — that should
make the fortunes of both of us, but I could see that
something was weighing on him. Did I know that
"Dick" Stoddard was dying? Kinder words were
never spoken of Stoddard than at that moment, and
Stedman was on his way to sit up the night with him.
The errand of love, with all its urgency, must have been
momentarily diverted. We — my wife and I — had
just come to town to embark for Italy the next day,
and when I later returned to the hotel a great bunch of
roses bore witness that even in gloom and distraction
his thoughts omitted none of the graceful things he
abounded in.

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MARK TWAIN AND E. C. STEDMAN

He was a generous letter writer, and the reader may
be interested in examples, the first referring to a bio
graphical sketch of him for which I was then gathering
material.

Kelp Rock, New Castle, Sept. 28, 1887.

DEAR MR. RIDEING:

There are drawbacks even in living on an island, you know, e. g.: Chas.
Reade's castaway lovers, on Godsend Island (see "Foul Play"), had no
parson handy — else they would have wedded and bedded. (Indeed they
came near to the latter — since the former was impossible — and I always
was vexed that the search steamer hove in sight at the thrilling moment!)
A drawback here, then, is that one sometimes runs out of letter-paper,
then has to fall back on his MS. quarto-post, as in the present instance, which
pray excuse.

We were glad to make your better acquaintance, though your visit was
done as soon as begun. "I only know" that, like the poet's infant, you
"came and went" — and that I drove to Portsmouth & back on three suc
cessive days. Literally, a flying visit. It now occurs to me that, after all,
you got nothing of what you came for — i. e., nothing to help you, outside
of your own artistic handling & imagination, to make any sort of a paper
about the boyhood of my uninteresting self. In T. B. A.'s case, you had
the best boy's story ever written — and, now I think of it, for scrapes and
experiences, my own "bad-boyhood" was about the same as his own, &
in very near a second " Ri vermouth."

I had thought of nothing to tell you. And what does one know of what
he really was & seemed as a boy? Those who then tended him are the ones
to cross-examine. There are still folks in old Norwich — (pronounced Nor-
ridge — to rhyme with porridge, vide "Mother Goose") who could tell much
more of my unusual and perverse boyhood than I can myself.

But I do recall that you asked me who were my friends and mates, &
that I only mentioned my fishing, trapping, hunting, with Ira. But I did
have, after all, more boys with me, daily, than is usual outside of board
ing school. My great-uncle & guardian had a reputation for managing boys,
Si there were many reared & educated in his house. Three pairs of us were
there during my stay — from my sixth to my fifteenth year — after which
I was transferred to Yale. Three pairs of brothers — Smilio & Virgilio
Lesaga (Cubans), Hunt & Turville Adams,Edmund & Charles Stedman; the
elder brother in each case two years older than the younger, and each three
the same age. We were a rather important and dominant sextette in the

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

town — not a place for nutting, berrying, etc., that we did not know & forage
in; not a scrape or adventure in which we did not unite. I was a little the
oldest of the lot, & probably the leader. Certainly I presented all the
petitions to the old gentleman, got credit for all the scrapes, & got most of
the thrashings — deservedly, I doubt not, for the others hadn't my imagina
tion, adventurous turn, rebellious independence. I was a great inventor
of stories — a raconteur — we slept four in a room; I had to manufacture
tales for the rest after the candle was out. The faculty left me as I grew up.
Are novelists, then, examples of "arrested development?"

In my childhood, in Plainfield, N. J., I was under an old man, my Grand
father Dodge — a stern old Puritan and disciplinarian. Afterward, under
my grand old Uncle Stedman, a fine scholar, noble heart, but also rigid
in old-fashioned ways. He taught me Latin, Greek; made me his compan
ion in his law-office, his gardening, his little farm; I daresay loved me more
than he showed — as his own sons had not taken to the scholarly studies
he still cared for. But we were often at open war. I now deeply regret
that I was not old enough, or sensible enough, to understand him at his
worth. My constant scrapes & rebellion must have tried him beyond meas
ure. But I always was the natural companion of old men — old scholars

— and born with a reverence for them. Years afterward I was the friend
& private secretary of that fine old Roman, Edward Bates — and was to
him all I ought to have been to James Stedman of Norwich Town.

We lived in Norwich Town (two miles from the city), the hive of the
Huntingtons, Trumbulls, Perkinses, Hydes, & the birthplace of Benedict
Arnold. The quaintest colonial town in New England — full of old customs
& traditions. Curfew — 9 P. M. — for centuries. Thanksgiving cele
brated as nowhere else in New England. Thanksgiving night, bonfires

— barrels strung on masts 60 feet high — stolen & begged by gangs of boys,
from the different districts — for months before.

Am pretty sure I was, though small, tough, and the captain of my set of
boys. Cannot remember ever being afraid. Never undertook a thing, good
or — I am sorry to say — bad, that I did not carry through at any expense
of labour or suffering.

I was a wretched and despised hand at any games without a secondary
motive. Couldn't play ball, for instance. Was a splendid swimmer, a
good runner, & jumper, a poor fighter & always fighting, a good sportsman.

From my earliest remembrance I made poetry. All of the Cleveland
blood do — bad cess to them! I was a natural writer, an insatiate reader —
specially of fiction, adventure, poetry. Of course I got hold of all the
great boys' books, of the Robinson Crusoe type; read by stealth the "Ara
bian Nights" & "Fairy Tales" & believed them. Went alone over the wood-

[170]

MARK TWAIN AND E. C, STEDMAN

lands, in early years, hoping to meet some Genie or Fairy. Did not believe
in the terrors of the Calvinism about me. Had to learn the Shorter Cate
chism, most of the Bible, &c., &c., go to church three times Sunday.

My earliest poet, Scott. Afterward, got hold of Byron, & Shakespeare
of courseo Then Coleridge, Shelley, & Keats, developed my sense of the
beautiful & spiritual in poetry. The only thing for which I have to thank

my step-father, Mr. T , was his drawing my attention to Wordsworth

— of whom he was a student. I was then 15. Then came along Tennyson,
etc., naturally.

Looking back, I can see that, while among kindred who did their duty
faithfully, I was in the worst possible atmosphere for a boy like myself to
get the right — i. e., the indicated — training. Doubtless, my strongest
traits were, first, an inborn & passionate love of beauty — of the beautiful.
I was eager to draw, to learn music, &c.9 & was restricted to my "studies";
secondly, a love of adventure; third, love of nature & books in equal pro
portions.

'Tis a bad thing to separate a child from his mother, & from his natural
habitat.

Finally, I was always in love with one little girl, & with larger ones as I
grew larger. Don't think any of them cared for me, except the heroine of
"The Door Step" & "Seeking the Mayflower."

There, I never have thought, certainly never have talked, so much of
myself before. After all, there is nothing to tell. I see the impossibility
of your making anything of what I told you; & I see that this effort at a
supplement is just as futile. But I pitied you so much, as one having to
make bricks without straw, that I have made an attempt to give you some
thing from which, without exactly using any of my garrulous words, you
may glean some fodder.

The dates of some of my earliest passable poems are under the head,
"Poems Written in Youth," in that Household Edition. They show a
natural ear — of course, little originality.

Sincerely yours,

EDMUND C. STEDMAN.

Mrs. Stedman & Mrs. S., Jr. say they hope you'll come again — & to
enjoy yourself, as we saw just enough of you to make us wish for more.

44 East 26th St., Tuesday, Dec. 18th, 1887.
MY DEAR RIDEING —

What a hearty fellow you are! It is worth while, after experiencing the
frequent anguish of bungling & ill-bred newspaper itemizing, to be praised

[171]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

for what one feels may be worth praising — if any of his work is — and
in the cleverest weekly letter that comes to this mart, and with the voice
whose sound is honest. I had put your note of the 14th by, for a Sunday
morning answer, & here I must begin by thanking you for quite touching
my heart by your remembrance & opinion of my former Whittier poem.
Well, that blank verse really came from the heart, I suspect — and wasn't
it Longfellow who said that,

"The heart
Giveth grace to every art?"

Now as to the poets & the Kinder, If you talk with Dick Stoddard, when
you come on here, he — who is very learned in the records and of poets'
lives, especially English poets — would be of genuine service to you. I
have written my sister to ask for some reminiscences of her girlish acquaint
ance with the Brownings, but don't know whether she will give me any.
What does come to my memory at once is a charming thing for you to
quote — & doubtless it is in your mind as well. I mean the pretty "Line to
My New Child Sweetheart," of Tom Campbell's, beginning —

I hold it a religious duty

To live & worship children's beauty—

and they would work in somewhere, perhaps in your Prelude to your series.
Swinburne is the greatest lover & laureate of children of all modern poets
I know. He has told me so — his friends have been mostly the very young
& the very old — of the latter, Landor, Trelawney, etc. You know his
book, " A Century of Round els' *r I could write a paper about the friendship
of young girl-poets & scholars for old men, e. g. — Ascham & Jane Grey,
Hugh Boyd & Miss Barrett — but I can't recall anything that would help
you as to poets and children.

Yes — you have caught an Aztec goddess in your remarkable photograph
of our town. Now write a legend of her career and fate!

Sincerely yours,

E. C. STEDMAN.

172

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

THE Malvolio of cities — sick of its own self-
conceit ! ' Thus Barrymore, with Bohemian
prejudices, described it in one of those epigrams
which spurted from him like sparks from a squib. And
Boston keeps its good opinion of itself in facing the world
and resents disparagement, conscious as it may be
— conscious or sub-conscious as it must be — of the
changes which are effacing its old distinction. As in
Edinburgh, the authors who gave it fame have gone
without replacement. It has lost its ancient peace, its
dignity, its seriousness, like nearly all the rest of the
world. Its new generation has no better manners and
no finer tastes than have other places. A few old people
of placid mien and benevolence, high-minded and al
truistic, remain, but they are as ghosts, with hardly more
of earth about them than the smell of lavender.

Such people seemed to preponderate in the Boston
I caught glimpses of in the early seventies, a town
unraided by grafters and unpinnacled by skyscrapers.
Soothing in its orderliness, its hotels were like the sar
cophagi of Egyptian kings, and its business was done in
rows of solemn-faced granite buildings two or three
stories high; its modest dwellings were gathered within
a mile's radius of Beacon Hill, with Commonwealth
Avenue just beginning to emerge from the shallows of
the Back Bay, to dip its feet like a cautious bather, as

[173]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

it were, without too much confidence in what it was
doing in that direction.

It was rigidly respectable and justified in its high
opinions of itself; everybody was polite and intelligent;
even the policeman raised his hand and said "Sir" or
"Madam" to you when you spoke to him. Its atmos
phere was that of an old-world seat of learning, deco
rous, unprecipitate, calm. Ho wells has caught it to
perfection in the first chapter of "A Woman's Reason."
One got the impression of the repose and intellectual self-
possession of an Oxford or a Cambridge released from
traditional impediments and occupied with the present
and future instead of the past; a place full of inquiry
and glowing desires and aspirations. The giants held
their own, and to the Saturday Club came Lowell,
Longfellow, Emerson, Whittier, Holmes and their friends.

Even then Boston was fond of clubs. Robert Grant
once said to me, " Whenever a man finds he is having
a good time in Boston he forms himself into a club."
The Saturday was founded at the same time as the
Atlantic Monthly, but though some of its members were
contributors to that magazine there was no connection
between the two. The Saturday, as Doctor Holmes
described it to me in a letter, "met at half -past two in
the afternoon to accommodate the members who came
from Concord, and each paid for his own dinner and that
of any friend whom he introduced. Longfellow sat at
one end of the table and Agassiz at the other. There
were no by-laws or rules, except those governing elec
tions, and there was neither ' speechifying ' nor formality
of any kind. Few literary men of eminence have ever
been allowed to pass through Boston without being
entertained by the Saturday Club; and at its table were

[174]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

to be found, besides those already mentioned, Hawthorne,
Motley, and Sumner.

'"There was and is nothing of the Bohemian element
about it," the "Autocrat" added, "but it has had many
good times and not a little good talking. We never
had a Bohemia in Boston, and we never wanted it."

But the "Autocrat" was wrong. The Papyrus was
in existence even then. A curious unpublished little
book lies before me, which was written, I think, by
George F. Babbitt. It is called "A Primer of the Papy
rus," and it explains that club with much simplicity.
There are two classes of members, literary and non-
literary, and the question, "What is the difference be
tween them," is answered in the "Primer," as follows:
"Well, Sonny, a Literary Member fetches only ten
dollars, while a Non-Literary Member fetches twenty-
five dollars — unless the Man who proposes your Name
is up to Snuff." Then there is a picture of an Egyptian
temple, with a sphinx grasping a bottle of champagne,
at the portals, and this is accompanied by the following
description: "Do you see this Magnificent castle? The
front entrance is guarded by Sphinxes and Things and
the Reed Immortal is cultivated in the Back Yard.
It is the Papyrus Club House, and it is located in the air.
The Non-Literary members furnish the Building and the
Literary members furnish the Air. The Art Gallery
contains the Busts of all the Ex-Presidents of the Club.
If you pay your Dues regularly and have the Custody
of the Returns, perhaps You can go on a Bust some da}^
Yourself." Article II of the constitution reads as fol
lows: "The object of this club shall be to promote good
fellowship and literary and artistic tastes among its
members," which is thus annotated in the audacious

[175]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

"Primer": "See this nice sentence. It is a Choice Ex
tract from the Constitution of the Papyrus Club. Is
it not a Beautiful Paragraph? It was built to test
the after-dinner Punch with. If the sentence can be
shouted with Ease then the Punch is Bad. But if the
Sentence cannot be Shouted with Ease then the Punch
is Good: Is it not a Great Invention? Let us all go
and Shout!"

When I joined the Papyrus, Dr. Frank A. Harris
was its president. A physician by profession, his best
medicine "was his own cheery disposition and unflagging
wit. Few could hold their own in fence with Aldrich,
but Frank Harris proved himself to be a worthy rival
at a luncheon 1 gave at Ober's one afternoon. Aldrich
in his best form was j>ro vocative, Harris on the defensive
at the beginning, 'wary and deferential, a little doubtful
of his abilities to cope with such an adversary. Boyle
O'Reilly was there too, and the altogether charming
Nugent Robinson, a visitor from New York, man of
letters and man of the world, the dreamer of iridescent
Utopias which never solidified, the millionaire of to
morrows which never came. But the rest of us were
silent and content to "watch and listen and laugh: it was
like the sword play of two masters of fence, swift as
flashes of light, and it went on without fatigue till the
afternoon drew in and the waiters began to set the tables
for dinner. It was impossible to sa'y which of the two
had the advantage in the end; I think it was a "draw."

One day I went to consult Doctor Harris profession
ally. I had had a call to New *York, and felt unequal to
the journey. He listened to my own diagnosis with much
patience, and, without offering me the prescription I
expected, put on his hat and overcoat to go out.

[176]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

" Coine on, " was all he said at the moment.

"Aren't you going to give me something?"

"Yes. Come on."

I thought he was leading me to a chemist's, but
instead he took me to the Algonquin Club and seated
me at a table.

"Here's the prescription," he said, giving it to the
waiter- "Oysters on the half shell, clear turtle soup,
a broiled grouse, plenty of celery, an omelette and a
pint of very dry wine. '

It worked like a charm, and I took the afternoon train
in the best of spirits.

He was one of the "medical examiners," who, to the
advantage of everybody, had superseded the old-time cor
oners, and many were his stories of the absurdities of the
struggles which had taken place between those antiquated
officials, who were paid by fees whenever their services
were required. They had chased one another down the
streets, and bandied abuse on the way, in their efforts
to be first on the scene of the tragedy and thus able to
claim the fees. They had fought over the body itself.

I was absent from Boston for twelve years, and when
I returned some of its charm had already gone, through
deaths, commercial expansion, and political decadence,
but Holmes, Lowell, Parkman, and Aldrich survived.

I had written an article about Doctor Holmes which
pleased him, and he paid me the compliment of saying,
"It is written as one gentleman should write of another."
He gave me the privilege of calling on him at his home on
Beacon Street, and in summer I was occasionally invited
to his cottage at Beverly Farms — "Poverty Flat," he
called it, because, as he said, it was close to Pride's
Crossing, the name of the next station to Beverly Farms,

[ 177 ]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

a neighbourhood of many estates much more splendid
than his own.

In a letter previous to my first visit he gave me a
detailed description of it:

The village of Beverly Farms is remarkable for its great variety of surface,
its picturesque rock ledges and bowlders, the beauty and luxuriance of its
woods, especially of its pines and oaks, the varied indentations of its shore,
and the great number of admirable situations for residences along the shore
and on the hills which overlook it.

Driving is the one great luxury of the place. The roads are excellent;
they lead to and through interesting villages and open a vast number of
fine prospects over the land and the ocean, and, among other frequent
objects of admiration, noble old elms in large numbers. There is a good
deal of riding as well as driving, and there are ladies among us who follow
the beagles as bravely as those who sit astride their horses' backs.

There is an infinite number of pleasant walks, but I do not think there is
a great deal of walking. I have never asked the shoemakers, but I doubt
if sole leather suffers a great deal with us during the summer. I walk
somewhat myself — pretty regularly, indeed — but I meet few people mov
ing on their own feet.

How other persons amuse themselves here I can hardly tell you. I think
there is a little gayety among the younger fashionable people, but the atmos
phere is not that of Newport or Lenox.

The "meet" for the hunt is the least solemn diversion on which I have
looked during my ten or a dozen summers here. A solitary bather splashes
in the sea now and then, and I have even seen two or three in a state of
considerable hilarity, but the water is cold and the air is cool, and the temp
tation to disport in the chilling waves is not overwhelming. Still, young
persons like it, and a few years ago I liked it well enough myself.

The wind at Beverly Farms blows over the water a great part of the time,
and is deliciously refreshing to tjiose who come from the hot city. Delicate
persons will be apt to find the climate too cold, and some may be better off
on any of our southern shores; but to those of the right temperament nothing
can be better than our cool, bracing air.

In short, it is a healthy, quiet, charming summer residence, and deserves
all its reputation as one of the loveliest spots on the New England coast.
But going there, as going to any country place, you must pack the spirit of
contentment and a desire for tranquil restfulness with your clothes and dress
ing case, or you will not find the happiness you are after.

[178]

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

He was one of the most accessible of men, though one
might infer from his books that he was intolerant of all
visitors except his closest friends. Seated in an easy
chair, facing the Charles River and Cambridge, a view
which recalled life-long associations, he would chat
through the better part of an afternoon and gently per
suade one to stay when one's conscience pricked one with
the fear of outwearing a welcome. "Homo sum, humani
nihil a me alienum puto — I am a man, and nothing that
concerns a man is a matter of indifference to me," he
used to chirp, and then launch out into discourses as
various and as suggestive as the chapters of "The
Autocrat." In part they were serious, but they usually
ended with a smile in some unexpected turn of wit or
fresh colloquialism. He brought Minerva down from
her pedestal, and, yielding to his mood, she danced for
him; indeed, I suspect that they winked at each other.
Psychology, which was then less in the air and less a by
word of the street than it is now, often came up in his
conversation, and if he did not believe in telepathy, he
had incidents within his own experience to quote which
inclined him to respect its possibilities.

"Only yesterday, he said, "I happened to think of a
man I had not seen for twenty years or more. It was
here in this very room. A little later I went downstairs,
and there, on the hall stand, was a letter from him.
A coincidence? I think it was more than that."

Another time he spoke of immortality. He was curled
up in his cushioned chair, with his forehead reposing
in his palm, and his eyes gazing across the river — which
was reddening in the late afternoon — toward Cambridge,
where part of his early life had passed.

In a pause my memory reverted to an incident in his

[179]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

I
boyhood. On his way to school, he, small, delicate, and

fanciful, had to pass under a glove-maker's sign — a great
wooden hand — which used to swing and creak and fill
him with terror. "Oh, the dreadful hand," he wrote,
"always hanging there ready to catch up a little boy,
who would come home to supper no more, nor get to bed
- whose porringer would be laid away empty thence
forth, and his half- worn shoes wait until his smaller broth
ers grew to fit them."

Oh, the dreadful hand, I thought as I looked at him.

"I often think of death, often, as I sit here, but I have
no fear of it. No," repeating the word and shaking his
head emphatically, "I have no fear of it." Then he
relaxed and smiled. "What do you suppose happened
the other day?"

He told me that Mr. McClure had called to persuade
him to give his views of immortality in a novel form. He
was to converse on the subject with a lady author -
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps — and an amanuensis was to
record what they said. "I wouldn't listen to it. I told
him that I would neither be allured nor McClured into
such a project. Why, it would be like an analysis of
my spinal marrow. They are always offering me jobs,
perhaps because of the facility with which I have turned
out occasional verses. I have done far too much nonsense
of that kind. Yes, that's it," he said, when I reminded
him of his own verses:

"Here's the cousin of a king;
Would I do the civil thing?
Here's the first-born of a queen;
Here's a slant-eyed mandarin.
Would I polish off Japan?
Would I greet this famous man?

[180]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

Prince or prelate, sheik or Shah?
Figaro ci and Figaro la!
Would I just this once comply? —
So they teased and teased till I
(Be the truth at once confessed)
Wavered — yielded — did my best."

"When I think of Gladstone and James Freeman
Clarke, both born the same year that I was, I feel futile
and almost ashamed of myself/' he added. "But I like
to hear any pleasant things that are said about me.
Here is a letter from a girl who says she sleeps with my
poems under her pillow. I wonder if she does — but
it's delightful to hear it. I like to be flattered; it is one
of the sweetest things in the world to me."

He spoke with the innocence and simplicity of a
child.

He was in the eighties then, and was proud of his old
age and greatly interested in old men and facts relating
to longevity. He admired Mr. Gladstone, and when after
a visit to Hawarden I delivered a message from the great
statesman to him, he closely questioned me regarding the
extent to which Mr. Gladstone was resisting the ravages
of time.

" Well, I on't often take stock, " he said with a twinkle,
"but the other day I happened to pick up this (a hand
glass) and look into that (a mirror), and I myself was
surprised to find a ring of hair on the back of my neck
that hasn't turned at all yet. But I feel that it's time
to take in sail. Look at my contemporaries — they're
all in dock — yes, and some of them pretty deep in the
mud, too."

That was a year before he died.

With all his geniality, he was a Brahmin; with all his
love of humanity, he was an aristocrat. His conscious-

[1811

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

ness of class and caste was undisguised and quite appar
ent, and yet he was essentially a Yankee, autochthonous
to New England and nowhere else.

Sometimes I saw Whittier at Danvers in the pleasant
house called Oak Knoll in which he spent his declining
years, a saintly old man who then had almost ceased to
write. Writing, he told me, had never been easy to him,
even in his prime. "Now I never pick up a pen that it
does not give me a headache," he said. In summer you
found him oftener in his garden than any other place, ply
ing his hoe or rake among the flowers, watching the antics
of the squirrels, or listening to the birds in the overhang
ing foliage. He was still a student in that "unhoused
lyceum, " as he called it, where he learned his first lesson
in song. He also told me that "Snow Bound" is in a
great measure autobiographical, that it describes what his
home life was till he reached his nineteenth year. The
various characters described in that poem are portraits,
and the house is the house in which he was born. It still
stands in Haverhill, and was in possession of the
family for more than two centuries; but the long line of
ancestors never made a fortune, and all they ever suc
ceeded in leaving their descendants was a good name and
a deeply implanted morality of character, moulded
according to the Quaker faith in which all of them were
nourished.

I became a neighbour of Francis Parkman, the histo
rian, at Jamaica Plain. "Make her plain," the train-
hands pronounced it, and a roguish friend of mine, hearing
it, used to whisper after a glance at some of the feminine
passengers, "Can't make 'em any plainer; no, sir, it
can't be done." Parkman was a tall, lean, shy man,
long-faced and melancholy, who for many years had suf-

[182]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

fered from insomnia and alarmed his friends by the huge
doses of sulphonal he confessed to. I never knew any
one kinder or more sympathetic. He had a wonderful
garden on the edge of Jamaica Pond, and there he culti
vated his roses more successfully than sleep.

Howells had gone, but almost any day you could meet
Aldrich, "a middle-aged young man," as he then called
himself, coming around "Brimstone Corner." You
might think that, as he was on his way to the Atlantic's
office, it would be improper to detain him, but very likely
he would press you, if you were a friend, to come in with
him and smoke. A winding stairway led into an isolated
box no bigger than a ship 's stateroom. There were two
or three prints and drawings in black and white on the
walls, and little furniture besides a couple of chairs, an
old brass-handled desk, and a chest of drawers stuffed full of
manuscripts. The windows looked out on the rear of the
houses in Beacon Street, and on the old Granary Burying
Ground, across the gray memorials of which and through
a screen of foliage we could see Tremont Street with its
procession of jingling horse-cars. And there he would
grow confidential, leaning back in his chair, smoking a
meerschaum pipe, and twirling a fragile gold chain at
tached to his eyeglasses, a familiar habit of his. Some
how one always met him with a smile and left him with a
laugh. He bubbled like an effervescent wine.

Although for some years we met day after day I had
many letters from him, and few that came to an end
without some gleam of his touch-and-go humour. He
writes to me from his cottage at Lynn Terrace — his
" sea-shell, "as he called it — and says : "I am guiltily em
ployed here in writing a short story for the editor of the
Atlantic, if he will accept it," the editor at that time being

[183]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

himself. Then he complains that he is getting "fat and
scant of breath — almost as fat as Howells." He liked to
believe himself to be overwhelmed with work, though I
never knew a more leisurely man. "I am up to my eyes
in lyrics and poems and short stories. Look out for them
(in order to avoid them) by and by." Then he praises
a little story of mine: "If you had remained in England,
you would never have learned to write such good English, "
and another note begins with a quotation from Caxton,
printed in a f ac-simile of the old English black letters :
"After dyverse Werkes, made, translated, and achieved,
having noo werke in hande I sitte in my studye, where
laye many dyverse paunflettes and Bookys."

His study was at the top of his Mount Vernon Street
house, and he liked to play the recluse in that sanctum.
Nothing was ever to be disturbed there; nothing out of
order restored to its proper place. The feminine hand of
control visible elsewhere was not allowed to raise itself
within that retreat of scholarly abstraction. Things
might tumble from the table; they were not to be picked
up till wanted, and then only by the recluse himself.
The ink might spill; the blot on the table was not wiped
off, and in the same way an accident to the mucilage was
not followed by the application of any restorative towel.
Of course, he worked there seriously enough, but he had
to have a little joke with himself. He chose to be as
fancy free as he was when a boy in the attic of his old
Portsmouth home, where, finding a half-used bottle of
hair restorer one day, he diligently applied the contents
to one of those old-fashioned, unscraped, cowhide trunks
and waited patiently to see the brown and white bristles
on it lengthen.

I quote two of his letters to me — the first I ever re-

[184]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

ceived from him, with its touch of facetiousness, and the
last, that which voices the deep feeling that flowed be
neath the sunlit surface:

April 6, 1882.
DEAR RIDEING:

Will you come and take an informal bite with me to-morrow (Friday)
at 6 P. M. at my hamlet, No. 131 Charles Street? Mrs. Aldrich and the
twins are away from home, and the thing is to be sans ceremonie. Costume
prescribed: Sack coat, paper collar, and celluloid sleeve buttons. We
shall be quite alone, unless Henry James should drop in, as he promises to
do if he gets out of an earlier engagement.

Suppose you drop in at my office to-morrow afternoon about 5 o'clock
and I act as pilot to Charles Street. Yours very truly,

T. B. ALDRICH.

DEAR RIDEING:

I knew that you would be sorry for us. I did not need your sympathetic
note to tell me that. Our dear boy's death has given to three hearts — his
mother's, his brother's and mine — a wound that never will heal. I cannot
write about it. My wife sends her warm remembrance with mine to you
both.

Ever faithfully your friend,

T. B. ALDRICH.

John Boyle O 'Reilly was another friend of those days.

"Hang you, O'Reilly! You have spoiled the best reg
iment in Ireland!" exclaimed Valentine Baker, the col
onel, when he arrested him for treason. O'Reilly's ad
ventures after that are known — his transportation to
Australia, his romantic escape, and his coming to Boston
in search of any work that he could do. He told me that,
first of all, and before he turned to journalism, he sup
ported himself as a fencing master and also gave lessons in
boxing. But he was not long in finding his proper place.
He who could disaffect a regiment from its allegiance had
no difficulty in attaching all sorts and conditions of men

[1851

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

to him wherever he went, and he was adored personally,
not only among people of his own race and religion, but
also where there was little sympathy with Irish sedition
or the Catholic Church. He was of his race in the par
adoxical contrast of his qualities: amiable, ingratiating,
persuasive, but so sensitive that an affront had only to be
suspected to inflame him with a passion of resentment
and reprisal.

The North American Review published an article on the
Irish question, in which Goldwin Smith, in his temperate,
measured, and unpartisan way, chose Irish failings rather
than English for his argument. It evoked a furious letter
of protest from O'Reilly to me, but hardly had the letter
reached me when he himself appeared at my office to
overwhelm me with vehement apologies out of all pro
portion to the words he wished to recant. He was kind
ness itself and seemed to make his own any tribulation
that was brought to him, his eyes kindling as he listened
and a responsive interest spreading over his face in his
eagerness to be of service.

Flattery never spoiled him, though it came in many
forms and with insidious frequency. He might have had
high office in the state had he desired it, but the only use
he made of his influence was in the recommendation of
his friends, not a few of whom were through him chosen
for offices of honour and liberal emoluments, while he
remained content, like a true journalist, a power behind
a screen, at his editorial post.

On one occasion he asked President Cleveland to give
a consulate to a needy literary friend — expecting that if
his request were granted at all the assignment would be
to some small continental port worth two or three thou
sand dollars a year. He was as much amazed as the

[186]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

beneficiary was delighted when the appointment turned
out three times as good as that looked for — nothing less,
indeed, than one of Great Britain's chief seaports. I
think that the emoluments from it were almost, if not
quite, equal to his own income, and I remember how he
laughed when he told me of it, not enviously, but with
a relish of what was ironical, rather than humorous, in
his achievement.

He had abounding humour; his smile invited you to see
the amusing side of what you were doing or relating,
when perhaps you, absorbed in it, had not awakened to
the latent possibilities of a mirthful turn. He smiled
oftener than he laughed, and when he laughed what you
heard was a rich, musical chuckle like the low buzz of a
'cello. Yet he may be said to have been a serious man,
fervid and quick to feel, with an underlying strain of mel
ancholy in him that came to the surface in the dark,
deep-set, expressive eyes which proclaimed his ideality.
Physically, he was supple, spare, and symmetrical, an
athlete in aspect and in action, with well-balanced feat
ures and a brilliant complexion, its clearness and glow
emphasized by raven-lil^e hair.

A monument to him stands in a corner of the Boston
Fenway, a sufficiently dignified work of art; but I should
prefer to see him commemorated in a full-length portrait
statue in such a characteristic attitude as we grew famil
iar with at the Papyrus Club when he was reading his
verses; his figure at its full height; his head poised like
that of a listening eagle; the manuscript projected in his
right hand, while the fingers of the left were hooked in
his trousers pocket — the whole expression that of in
spiration and exaltation.

Henry Bernard Carpenter, another Irishman, is not

[187]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

to be forgotten. He came to Boston from Liverpool for
reasons best known to himself, and though he was the
brother of the Lord Bishop of Ripon, and had been in
tended for the Church of England, he joined the Unitarians
and preached to delighted congregations in the building
which is now the Hollis Street Theatre. His eloquence
was overwhelming. Listening to him in his rhetorical
flights, one had the sensation of being smothered by the
odorous and prismatic downpour of roses. Doctrine
and dogma received little attention. The spirit mounted
and beckoned in ecstatic accents, which it was almost
exhausting to follow, and you came away breathless,
entranced, and perhaps a little bewildered.

He who had thus moved you was one of the simplest
and most human of men, a poet as well as a preacher,
a lover of his kinol, who reconciled the kingdom of the
world with the kingdom of God. He seldom missed the
relaxations of the Papyrus, and on Sunday nights gath
ered his intimates about him for suppers in his rooms
in the Hotel Glendon. As fair as O'Reilly was dark,
he was nevertheless a type of his race. He spoke
with a mellifluous touch of the brogue, quickly, trippingly,
with spontaneous humor and wit, and was restless in his
solicitude for your comfort and happiness, whoever you
might be.

His standards were generous. "There," he said to me
one day when we were standing on a Boylston Street
corner and a friend was seen approaching, "there's the
perfect man — a man with all the virtues and all the
vices of his kind. That is what I call the perfect man."
A not exacting appraisement, but one practically and
eminently characteristic of Carpenter.

Who remembers dear old George Snell, the club's

[188]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

Englishman, Boston's Englishman, the Englishman as
he is popularly prefigured everywhere — kind, slow, pon
derous, who would make speeches and never was able
to extricate himself from the web he wove for himself
at the outset?

Snell was the architect of the old Music Hall, where I
first heard Wendell Phillips and Emerson — Emerson
with that fixed, undaunted, seraphic smile, which was
never brighter than when he spilt his manuscripts over
the stage and took five or ten minutes leisurely to pick
up the scattered leaves, beaming all the while on the
audience as though it could not be possible for them to
miss seeing what an exquisite joke all this was! The old
Music Hall, where Anna Dickinson flamed, with real
tears in her eyes, against the subjugation of her sex;
where Henry Ward Beecher shook his long mane and
poured out his strange mixture of eloquence and familiar
jocularity; where all the stars of the golden age of
the lecture bureau in its prime flashed in turn, with in
termissions of oratorios and ballads; where I heard Chris
tine Nilsson, fair as a flower, radiant as a star, sing her
first song in America! What memories of profitable
and improving evenings of Victorian propriety and
New England inexpensiveness the old Music Hall, that
temple of chaste delights and continent intellectuality,
brings up!

But I must come back to Snell, to tell a story of him.
He lived in the Studio Building, environed by the ac
cumulations of a discreet taste and ample means; he
was sufficient to himself beyond other detached men in
that he was a gastronomer who had not only a palate and
an appreciation, but the gift of gratifying both through
his own skill in the kitchen. A cook was superfluous to

[189]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

him; I believe he was prouder of his epicurean talent than
of his architecture.

One evening he met Bernard Carpenter and me on
our return from a country wedding, and insisted that we
should dine with him in his studio, which we were all the
readier to do since we had missed our luncheon, and,
after trifling with salads and strawberries, were very
hungry. His little dining-room would have provoked an
appetite had we not brought it with us. Where pictures
did not hang against the walls and doors, shelves and cup
boards glittered with silver and Sheffield plate, flagons,
decanters, goblets, and smaller glasses of prismatic Ve
netian and Bohemian elegance. Out of one window
he had built a refrigerator, and behold, within it, a
dressed brace of birds, celery, oysters, cutlets! Out of
another window, a compact and ingenious range, heated
by gas, which seemed more than equal to anything that
could be reasonably expected from it. Every nook had
been utilized, and what was not of utility in a narrow
sense compelled attention by its beauty.

What a dinner we anticipated here! And how we
praised the taste, the comfort and the ingenuity of the
equipment! But our appetites were gnawing and clam
ouring for "demonstrations" while Snell stuck to theory
and made no progress — not even a start — toward re
lieving our famine.

Eight o'clock struck on the clock at "Brimstone Cor
ner," and, like Jack Tanner in "Man and Superman/'
he was "still talking." Carpenter's appreciation, which
had been rhetorical, drooped now, and he turned to me
with the despair of a castaway who finds himself alone
on a foodless island. Nine o'clock! and like the farmer
with his claret, we were "getting no forrarder,"

[190]

SOME BOSTON MEMORIES

Somewhere between that and ten o'clock our spirits
surged. Still talking heavily to us from the distance, Snell
lighted the range and went into another room, and we
heard him moving about there for half an hour — doing
what? We were wondering and hoping when he reap
peared in the full uniform of a cook — jacket, apron, and
flat cap. all of spotless white, the table-cloth across his
arm. We stared at him like condemned men who hear
that there is no reprieve, for he sat down and renewed
his monologue! It was to himself now; we could not
speak. In a moment he dozed. "Quick!" whispered
Carpenter, tragically. "To the club ! Quick ! "

We explained elaborately and apologized profusely
when we again met him, and he forgave us for the affront
we had put upon his hospitality.

"You missed it, though," he said. "Those birds were
delicious."

"When did you eat them?"

"Ah — er — er — let me see. No; not that night.
Er — er — the next day."

But we — Carpenter . and I — had experienced star
vation as poignantly as Jack London ever described it, for
it was past eleven o'clock before we found relief at the club.

Another friend of those days, also a Papyrian, was
Julius Eichberg, the musician, father of the brilliant
lady who is now the wife of John Lane, the publisher.
Eichberg was the last survivor of Mendelssohn's or
chestra, a picturesque, pallid, and stately man, with a
massive, leonine head and a mane of wavy, silvery hair
that fell from it like a storm-tossed cascade. Though
a German, he spoke English almost like a native, and
wrote it even better, with idiomatic raciness. His unpub
lished reminiscences of Mendelssohn and others, now

[191]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

I believe, in Mrs. Lane's possession, should some day
find a welcome in a book. Serious in manner and sono
rous in voice, he was apt in graphic phrases. When he
met me on my return from my wedding journey he star
tled me by a question, asked in the deep, solemn, rever
berating tones of an inquisitor: "Well, sir, what is it?
a sacrament or a superstition?"

Playful as he was, an unassailable dignity and self-
possession shielded him from too much familiarity, even
in those who were his intimates.

One night we were dining at the St. Botolph Club,
and when pork chops were served as one of the courses
Eichberg helped himself to them freely. A well-known
painter who sat next to him, more injudicious than un
kind, exclaimed jokingly, "Here, Eichberg, you musn't
eat those. You can't be a Jew if you do."

Eichberg turned on him in the haughtiest manner,
speaking as from a height and from his soul with in
flexible pride: "But I am a Jew." The words had an
Olympian menace and defiance in them.

A painful silence followed, and, seeing his mistake, the
blunderer stammered, "I didn't mean anything. Why,
l have Jewish blood in my own veins."

Eichberg faced him, tossed his mane, shrugging his
shoulders as he did so, restrained but not pacified. He
breathed from a depth that heaved his body as he cast
the extenuation aside. He spoke with a reverberating
inflexion, like a pontiff about to excommunicate. A pause
offered no possibility of reprieve.

"You — have — Jewish blood — in your veins? So!
But even that does not gonzole me."

And ending, with a sigh of unutterable significance,
he froze again.

[192]

HENRY M. STANLEY AND PAUL DU
CHAILLU

IMAGINATION is precipitate, and those who have it
know how often it misleads them. It is light-
winged and audacious, and cannot hear of any in
teresting person without at once prefiguring him in a
fanciful portrait which is more than likely to be wrong
and confusing in every particular. The reading of his
books or even his letters serves not in revealing his ap
pearance to us, but from a thin soil of evidence those of
us who are blessed or afflicted with the visionary and
anticipatory habit draw, to use a phrase of Henry James
in relation to Taine, luxuriant flowers of deduction.

Henry M. Stanley is an instance of what I have in
mind. I had talked with men who had been with him
on his African expeditions, and the impression I gathered
from them was that, though he was not inhuman, he
spared neither man nor beast when in desperate straits.
He would not defer to the counsel or the pleas of others,
or have any patience with less than instant and un
questioning obedience to his orders under all circum
stances. Nor would he forbear under arguments or
excuses, or relax his severity by any familiarity or pleas
antries, even when his object had been gained. He
was both despot and martinet; exacting, silent, and
inscrutable.

"I cannot say we loved him," one of his lieutenants

[193]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

said to me; "we were all afraid of him: but we all believed
in him."

What details to inspire an imaginary portrait of him!
The silent man in white, imperturbable in the heart of the
African forest, his words restricted to commands, which
his followers, recognizing their destiny in him, leaped
to obey!

I had not met him in my old newspaper days, w*hen he
was a reporter on the New York Herald, but after his
return to America from his successful search for Living
stone, he came to one of the monthly dinners of the
Papyrus Club in Boston, that Bohemian gathering of
"literary" and "non-literary" members described by
Ho wells in "A Modern Instance." Prominent in it
in those golden days were John Boyle O'Reilly, Charles
Eyre Pascoe, Robert Grant, John D. Wheelwright,
Alexander Young, Frank Underwood (founder of the
Atlantic), George F. Babbitt, and Frank A. Harris,
dramatist and physician.

A list of the guests would include not only the van
ished generation of Boston's Augustan age, in which
Motley, Holmes, Emerson, Parkman, and Lowell were
preeminent, but also almost every celebrity who ever
came to that city.

None of them was received with excessive deference;
nor did their presence, however exalted they might be,
restrain the customary chaff and exuberance that noisily
sped the dinner. I think that when it was announced
that Stanley had accepted an invitation, it caused more
awe than had ever been seen in the club before, and that
others visualized him as I had done in my mind's eye —
superhuman rather than human, for whom one 's admira
tion was necessarily qualified by a degree of fear.

[194J

Photograph by Morris, N. Z. Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Co.

HENRY M. STANLEY

STANLEY AND DU CHAILLU

Then he appeared, closely-knit, broad-shouldered and
below, rather than above, medium height, with a face
whose natural pallor had been overlaid by exposure, and
whose expression was more of intellectual problems than
of the physical problems the solution of which had made
him famous.

Probably those who came to entertain him never had
a more difficult task. Unusual compliments were paid,
and questions asked, apparently without moving him
to pleasure or interest. Whether he sat or stood, he
fidgeted and answered in monosyllables, not because he
was unamiable or unappreciative, but because he -- this
man of iron, God s instrument, whose word in the field
brooked no contradiction or evasion, he who defied ob
stacles and danger and pierced the heart of darkness —
was bashful even in the company of fellow craftsmen!

His embarrassment grew when, after dinner, the chair
man eulogized him to the audience; he squirmed
and averted his face as cheer after cheer confirmed the
speaker's rhetorical ebullience of praise. "Gentlemen, I
introduce to you Mr. Stanley, who," etc. The hero
stood up slowly, painfully, reluctantly, and, with a ges
ture of deprecation, fumbled in first one and then another
of his pockets without finding what he sought.

It was supposed that he was looking for his notes, and
more applause took the edge off the delay. His mouth
twitched without speech for another awkward minute
before, with a more erect bearing, he produced the object
of his search and put it on his head. It was not paper,
but a rag of a cap; and, with that on, he faced the com
pany as one who by the act had done all that could be
expected of him, and made further acknowledgment of
the honours he had received superfluous. It was a cap

[195]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Livingstone had worn, and Livingstone had given him.
The others left their seats and crowded about him for an
explanation — not all knew the meaning of it — and
after a dry, stammered word or two, he sank with a sigh
of relief from a terrifying predicament into his chair.

Years afterward I occasionally met him in London at
his house in Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, at parties,
and at the House of Commons. He had finished his
work in Africa meanwhile, and, with reason to be satis
fied with what he had done in opening that continent to
civilization, he had settled down with a beautiful, ac
complished, and adoring wife. She would have made a
society man of him, but he never looked happy at social
functions. The only complaint she made against him
was that he would stand aside instead of asserting him
self in a crowd. Whenever there was a rush for seats
in a train, all the better accommodation would be taken
before he made any effort to provide for her or himself,
and so elsewhere. He would allow himself to be trodden
on without remonstrance; never was there so patient a
lion. So, when he entered the House of Commons, he
was never as conspicuous as he should have been, on his
merits.

"There are only one or two subjects on which I should
care to speak," he said to me one afternoon at "tea on the
Terrace." "For instance, when African questions have
come up, I have thought my knowledge of that country
sufficient to be of service; but, somehow or other, another
fellow is always on his feet before me, and though he may
never have been in Africa, the Speaker gives him the floor.

That was the only time I ever heard him bewail his
ineffectiveness in Parliament, the only murmur of dis
content. Knighthood, the freedom of great cities, and

[196]

STANLEY AND DU CHAILLU

the highest degrees of the universities and learned socie
ties had been conferred on him. His table and sideboard
were loaded with caskets of silver and gold holding trib
utes to his achievements, which his wife loved to display.
She herself, a woman of wit and beauty, was the painter
and exhibitor in the Royal Academy of the best portrait
of him. But he often seemed as distraught in London
as he had been at the Papyrus so many years before.

Such was the impression I received of him. I quote,
however, a letter of Lady Stanley's which portrays him
from her more intimate point of view:

DEAR MR. RIDEING:

You have certainly hit the mark, when you describe Stanley as very shy;
but in any public assemblage where he had to speak, he quickly overcame
that feeling of bashf ulness and spoke with easy power. I think your mem
ory played you a trick, when you say that one of his officers told you that
they feared Stanley more than they loved him.* I think perhaps they
did both, but love was deep and lasting. Stanley, however, was not the
stern, relentless, sombre man, without fun or humour, so often imagined.
He was bubbling over with fun and boyish spirits, when the occasion allowed
it, though of course in Africa he probably had to repress himself.

Stanley never read his Bible in the presence of his officers, and he never
spoke of his religious convictions; indeed, he was extremely reticent on this
subject. In a crowded assemblage his one idea was to get away, but to see
him at Furze Hill, with his friends, you would have found him full of spirits.

What a contrast between Stanley and Paul du Chaillu !
"I, Paul, ' as Du Chaillu usually spoke of himself. He
reminded me of the old story of the Marseillaise and the
Gascon. "I," said the former, "love art — music,
painting, poetry." The latter declared, "I love sport,
always sport, nothing but sport." He then described his
recent experiences in Africa.

"Ten lions in twenty minutes — not a bad record,

*No, Lady Stanley is wrong there.

[197]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

eh? After breakfast I went out again. Lighted a
cigarette. Heard a noise in the bushes to the left. An
other lion. Bang! Killed him! Went a little farther,
took a sip from my flask. Noise in the bushes to the
right. Another lion. Bang! Killed him! Had a nap
and a sandwich. Getting tired of it. This time a sound
in the bushes right ahead. The biggest lion you ever
saw — thirty feet from his muzzle to the tip of his tail,
every inch of it. Levelled my gun and aimed."

The Marseillaise could stand it no longer. "See here,
if you kill that lion, I'll kill you."

The warning was promptly taken. "Bang! Missed
him!"

Du Chaillu claimed too many lions, and listening to
him one had the not unpleasant feeling of reverting to
childhood and sitting in the lap of the amazing Mun-
chausen. He was dark, small, volatile, and voluble, and
no matter how a conversation with him drifted, it was
almost sure to end in the tropical bush, among gorillas
and beasts of prey. With fierce gesticulations and a
flashing eye, he pictured the scene dramatically. " Bang !
Another lion!" or a mammoth ape, excelling in temper
and strength all the monstrous prodigies that had already
been introduced to us.

I remember his account of his first lecture in Boston.

"Bah! I had ten gorillas behind me on the platform,
stuffed, and about twenty in the audience before me,
unstuffed. I, Paul — I — I — I ! "

His habit of rodomontade discredited him. He was
like a braggart boy who has done something and so ob
viously exaggerates it that he is deprived of even the
lesser glory his actual feats should earn for him. He
might have desired to refrain from romancing and em-

[198]

Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Co.

PAUL DU CHAILLU

STANLEY AND DU CHAILLU

bellishing, but his imagination rode him like a highway
man and spurred him into many flights through the
moonshine of illusion. When his work was winnowed,
the bulk of it preserved substantial values to science
and geography. What had to be cast aside could be
attributed, not to intentional imposture, but to that
rough rider of temperamental exuberance that risks its
neck without other motive or goal than the diversion of
spectators. So many admirable qualities had he — he
was so genial, so vivacious, and so witty — that I dis
quiet my conscience in mentioning his foibles at all,
and question whether the consciousness of what I have
said may not aggravate rather than extenuate the un-
kindness of it.

[199

XII

A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN AND
HIS FRIENDS

SINCE 1878 it has been my custom to make fre
quent trips to Europe and to England, and one
of my first friends in London was George H.
Boughton, the Royal Academician, whose success never
spoiled him, and who remained unaffected, unpreten
tious, and accessible under all circumstances to those for
whom he cared, even when they had dropped far behind
him in achievement and distinction. I dare say that
many of us have heard complaints that success is estrang
ing, that it has little time to spare for those it outpaces,
though it protests that its heart is unchanged and unalter
able. It pretends to bewail the days that are gone, and
wishes them back: it "dear old fellows" you, and will
drop in on you some day soon at your "diggings," and
when you murmur congratulations it smirks and says
"nonsense," and that there are no such times as the old
times. Then — "Ta-ta, old chap!" — and off it goes
in its shining Victoria or landau, breathing a sigh of
relief at the escape from further detention, and for
getting you in a flash until years hence some mischance
perhaps restores you to that fickle memory. Success, we
are told, likes the company of its peers in its own seventh
heaven, and has its own proper apology for its choice,
and it is only when it stoops to humbug that it repels.
There was nothing of that sort about Boughton. He

; [200]

A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

clung to old comrades, and all he asked of them was
that they should be interesting. "All that is necessary
to success, socially, in London," he said axiomatically,
"is that you shall be interesting." And for newer and
younger acquaintances, if they prepossessed him, and
had talent meriting recognition, there could not have
been a more useful or a more willing service than that
which he gave voluntarily in putting them on their feet.

He knew everybody in literature and in art, and
everybody liked him. "I have been sitting between
Browning and Leighton, and Boughton put me there.
You may think I am dreaming. I thought I was. I
had to pinch myself to make sure. But it's a fact,"
wrote a young American artist to me soon after his
arrival in England with a letter of introduction to Bough-
ton at his beautiful house on Campden Hill, Kensington.
A simple missive of that kind to him usually opened not
only his own door, but also the doors of the eminent
people in his circle. Things like that one had to dis
cover for one's self, but he was not reticent about the
kindnesses done for him by others.

My own letter of introduction to him, presented in
1878, at once led to hospitalities as little expected as
they were deserved, and they were continued to the end
of my long friendship with him. Sprightly in figure
and infectiously genial and informal, he said that after
luncheon he would be disengaged and ready to go out
with me. What would I like to do ? Kensington was then
unfamiliar to me, and I was a worshipper of Thackeray.
I suggested a stroll to some of Thackeray's haunts in
that suburb where he lived so long and where so much
of his greatest, work was written. Thackeray himself
could have recognized the neighbourhood then; now he

-1301]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

would be estranged in it, if not lost. So we spent all
the afternoon in company with Thackeray's ghost and
the ghosts of his characters, and saw him sauntering
up High Street, a commanding figure in loosely -fitting
clothes, abstracted till the voice or the touch of a friend
arrested him and turned him into smiles. Miss Thack
eray (Lady Ritchie) was out of town: she was then
living in a small house on Young Street — "dear old
street," she calls it — opposite her old home, No. 13 in
her girlhood, No. 16 now, which ought to be the most
celebrated house of all London, for there "Vanity Fair/*
"Esmond" and "Pendennis" were written, in a second-
story room overlooking gardens and orchards in the
rear. A later tenant was afraid that a tablet in front
would attract too much attention, but one had been
inserted in the rear wall, and Thackeray himself would
hardly have thought it superfluous. When he took
James T. Fields, the Boston publisher, to the front door
of that domicile he said with mock gravity, "Down on
your knees, you rogue, for here 'Vanity Fair' was
penned, and I will go down with you, for I have a high
opinion of that little production myself!"

Kensington Square is round the corner from Young
Street, commercialized and decayed now, but then select
and secluded and haunted by the figures of Esmond,
Lady Castlewood, and Beatrice.

What an afternoon all this made for me, and we
ended it at the Arts Club, in Hanover Square, where
Whistler also was dining — an unmistakable poseur,
long-limbed and nonchalant, with a drawl as sesqui
pedalian as that of Mark Twain.

The incident happened long afterward, but I believe it
is new to print. Whistler called on another friend of mine,

A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

Albert T. Sterner, the artist, at his studio in Paris, and
while they were talking Sterner's little son brought out
some of his own sketches and endeavoured to induce the
famous visitor to look at them.

"Yes-yes-yes." Whistler put the boy aside.

"Do you know, Sterner, I'm wet. I think I ought
to have some hot toddy."

It was or had been raining. The boy disappeared
for a minute, and came back with one of his sketches in
a frame. Whistler instantly received it from him, and
roared, "Haw, haw! The boy's a genius. Haw, haw!
He knows the value of a frame!"

Boughton was especially fond of Lord Leighton, and
Sir John Millais and had an almost boundless appre
ciation of them as artists and as men. Full of gratitude,
he never wearied of praising Millais 's service to him,
and as an example he told how, when he was worried
about the portrait of a little girl he was painting and
repainting without getting the effect he strove for,
Millais called, and, learning of his distress, scrutinized
the picture.

"Hum!," said Millais, "I know that girl; it's her
mouth you've got wrong: give me a bit of pencil. This
is the way her mouth goes," and as he said the words,
he drew on a piece of paper the correct lines. "That's
the only thing wrong with it. Put that right, and you
won't have any more trouble with it."

Millais, said Boughton, was exactly like a doctor in
his manner, and most soothing. The great thing about
him which always impressed you was his clean mind
and his sense of healthfulness. He was always like a
healthy English squire who had lived all his life out
of doors.

[203]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

For some twenty years, while he was president of
the Royal Academy, Leighton gave a series of dinners
to all the members, in batches of twenty or so, arranged
according to seniority, going thus through the forty
members and the thirty associates; and to these would
always be added a good admixture of those coming men
who were as yet not within the restricted circle of the
Royal Academy. Many a young aspirant saw a strong
hint in one (and often many) of those coveted invi
tations of what was in the "lap of the Fates" for him,
and in the very near future, probably.

The dinners were always merry ones, for Leighton was
a lover of a good jest or story, and his splendid laugh was
as musical as his nature After the artistic dinner
would come the coffee in the Persian court, beside the
patter of the marble fountain. And afterward the
guests would troop up the wide, picture-lined staircase
to the vast, overflowing study, with the artist's work
on show — complete and incomplete pictures, and all
the most elaborate sketches and studies for every part
of the work done or in hand. Besides these studies on
canvas and paper would be some others in wax or clay,
not only for his sculptures and bronzes, but for groups
in his large and important pictures as well. Many of
these little figurines would suggest by their classic grace
those from Tanagra.

"Now, boys" — Leighton generally called his associates
"boys" — "suggestions, criticisms, praises, and condem
nations are earnestly invited and gratefully received," and
there was no let or hindrance to any sound or sincere ex
pression of any one's feelings as to the works before them.

He had one of the great, open minds that would take
advice as freely as it was offered, Boughton told me.

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A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

"I mind me of a rather typical instance of this which
tells against myself a bit. It was the year that he ex
hibited his 'Rescue of Andromeda.' On the line and next
neighbour to it I found, on the members' varnishing and
'touching-up days,' a picture of my own, I forget which
one. Leighton was up on a staging, working for some
hours in perfect silence, which I did not seek to inter
rupt. After a time he descended from his altitude, and
taking me back a few steps by a willing arm, demanded
a searching criticism.

' 'If you see anything to suggest, now is the time, my
boy, to out with it, or else forever after hold thy peace/

"'Well, I do see one small but important matter that
I will mention, as you invite remarks.'

"'Good! And that is-

"'Well, it's the insufficient-looking little "bolt from
the blue" that seems to cause such agony to the stricken
monster of the deep.'

"'Not devilish enough?'

"'Not much more fatal than a big paint-brush handle.'

"Leighton laughed, and asked, 'Have you any idea
of what such a "bolt," or shaft, or arrow, should be?'

"'Not at this very moment,' I urged, 'but '

"At that he handed me his splendid palette and
brushes and said, 'Now, my son, look out for my
return in half an hour, and during that time you have
carte blanche to create some lethal weapon that would
be likely to annoy, if not to slay, the monster — no fire
works, you know!'

"I mounted the president's scaffold, his palette and
brushes in hand and tried hard to conjure up some deadly
and worthy arrow of destruction. I need not say that
this honour thrust upon me was soon observed by some

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

of the older members, and taken to be some weird joke
of mine.

"Come down from there! Send for Leighton at
once, somebody!'

"They must have thought me suddenly gone mad, as
I only said, 'Go away! I have leave to finish this splen
did work.'

"They wanted to throw me out, and might have done
so but for the return of Leighton, who calmed their
fears by assuring them that it was all right. I was
evolving a heaven-sent arrow to stagger the monster.
The laugh on me came when I was obliged to own
that I had done nothing to the picture except to stare
idly at it. Then their fears were appeased and they
departed."

I never knew two men more alike than were Boughton
and George du Maurier. I do not refer to their personal
appearance — in that they differed — but to their sim
plicity of character and their detestation of vanity and
pretence. Both of them were unobtrusive and incon
spicuous and completely free from ostentation in dress
and manner. Both viewed life comprehensively and
with humorous leniency, and both irradiated a sym
pathetic warmth which at once unsealed confidences
and penetrated the barriers of one's reserves. Intelli
gence awoke and tingled, and one's humanity glowed in
conversation with them, though their speech was that of
the least pedantic and least formal of men, and nbt above
a flip of slang when slang could trap an elusive meaning.
A word sums them up — they were both natural to the
core, and that is a much rarer quality than it appears
to be at the moment, or until we search for instances of
it in an apish and subservient age, which opposes and

[2061

A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

discredits and maligns truth and simplicity as it approves
and encourages artificiality and convention.

Like Du Maurier, Boughton had a very fine and dis
criminating appreciation of literature. He had about
as many authors as artists among his friends, and had
he chosen to abandon one profession for the other
his pen could have supported him. He described
Holland as well as it has ever been described and some
of his experiments in fiction reached a psychological
depth below the surface of lambent pleasantry. One of
his stories — "A Bar Sinister" — has not been dislodged
from my memory by any of the later adhesions of a
quarter of a century, and it holds there through its in
effaceable vividity and originality.

His letters were like his talk, unreserved and spon
taneous. I quote only two of them, the longest referring
to an article about him which had appeared in a popular
magazine:

9 Calverly Park, Tunbridge Wells, July 23, 1900.
MY DEAR RIDEING:

I was away from London when your very kind note came to West
House, and the scorched soles of my weary feet have had so little rest
since that the "happy moments" have not been mine to reply until this
peaceful Sunday down here.

It is very interesting, and most flattering to me, that you like the interview
so much that you desire further reminiscences and experiences. The article
seems to have "caught on" over here, judging by the dozens of press notices
that the enterprising clipping bureau has showered upon me. Of course
there is a lot more of the same sort of material stowed away in the carefully
dusted "pigeon-holes" of my memory. I could have swamped that smiling
interviewer with streams of memories — vastly pleasant to me — but as
to the wary and easily bored public, I — and he — was not so certain.
He was of legal mind and profession, that young man, with a tendency to
extract the "evidences" of things, and to let the literary qualities go hang.
And what he did not trim off his editor didy and made matters of "Grad-

[207]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

grind " fact outstand in all their bare nakedness. The little personal inci
dents, which he, the interviewer, extracted from me were given by me as
showing the little "tides" in my career, which, taken just as they happened
instead of some other way, carried me on the way I wanted to go, instead of
landing me in some backwater of stagnation. . . . But as the thing
seems to please, I suppose its way is better than my way.

Your proposal is "so sudden," as the old maidens say, that I am blushing
with confusion. Like the maidens, I am not unprepared for the proposal,
as I have been writing a good deal "off and on" (all sorts of stuff) lately;
but not any reminiscences. And as I so often delight in my memories of
the good people — loved by the world — that it has been my good fortune
to know or even meet, I think that some more "memories" might interest
the world outside my own little back " pigeon-holes." I saw enough of Dante
Rossetti, for instance, to. give a charming side of his character not enough
dwelt upon by his biographers. Also of Lord Leighton — one of the most
splendid fellows I ever met, and whose equal I never expect to see again.
And his great quality as a man was supreme personal charm. I never
thought to criticize his art, or Rossetti's, or Millais's or Browning's, but
just to dwell on the rare qualities of character and curious incidents that
reveal such men.

So, my dear Rideing, you may expect to hear more of this matter from me
at an early date. Just now I am resting a bit.

Yours ever,

G. H. BOUGHTON.

9 Calverly Park, Tunbridge Wells, August 26, 1900.
MY DEAR RIDEING:

I am afraid I have already exhausted my memories (such as are not too
personal and private) of Millais and Browning for the benefit of that inter
viewer. The few other memories of Millais are much on the same line
(of his ever-ready kindness). There are many bits of gossip such as are
given in two already published biographies. But I don't wish to repeat
used-up matter. My other memories, many too personal, are connected
with the inner life of the Royal Academy — so "inner" that they are not
only " tiled," but quite uninteresting to the average youth. So too of Leigh-
ton. Outside the Academy walls he was the soul of kindness — but one
anecdote would serve as a type of the rest. What took place in his own
house is also too sacred (and too remote) for the average reader.

So much for England. Paris I gave as to my master there in the .

American memories touched a new field, and a name (in Gifford) that has
to be reckoned with, one day.

[208]

A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN

My Durand experience (there was only one) I also gave to the .

Page I never met. Voila!
Many salutations to you all the same.

Yours ever sincerely,

G. H. BOUGHTON.

Although Boughton was English by birth, and never
entirely outgrew the rugged dialect of his native Mid
lands, his youth in New York had half-Americanized
him, and he was often claimed as an American artist.
Some of the best of his work depicted scenes in American
history, especially those of the Dutch period and that of
the first settlement of New England. The gray-green,
sandy and low-cliffed coast of Massachusetts, and the
ascetic solemnity of Pilgrim and Puritan, sad-faced,
heavily hatted, and heavily cloaked, found in him an
interpreter as true and as subtle as Hawthorne himself,
and he was no less successful in the portrayal of the more
humorous and substantial types of New Amsterdam,
immitigably Dutch in their transplantation. I think
that, though admired by the public, he was appraised
higher and more accurately by his fellow painters.

The last time I saw him he was summering at Peters-
field and I at Selborne, and I drove part of the way home
with him through the pretty region of Gilbert White.
He was less animated than usual. Ordinarily he was
blithe and jaunty, with a disposition to see the funny
side of things in discourse. Now I noted that he was
subdued, and he spoke of the ailment which very soon
afterward became fatal. To visualize him the reader
should think of a rather plain man of medium height
and girth, with a round head and a nutty complexion,
and merry, inviting eyes of quick observation; leisurely
in manner, but full of sensibility; a man of the world,

[209]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

but not a man of fashion, who might have been passed
in the street without recognition as a man of distinction.
He was indefatigable in social life, but deferred little to
its conventions. I suppose there were functions at
which he must have donned a top hat and a Prince Albert
coat, but even in the zenith of the London season I never
met him in the daytime when he was not wearing a
bowler and a jacket suit of cheviot or tweed.

I have seen in print a story that the last of Du Mau-
rier's drawings were made, on account of the impairment
of his eyesight, by Miss Du Maurier, who is said
to have "caught her father's manner perfectly and re
produced his types and style so as really to justify him
in letting the sketches go out as his own, since no one
could detect the slightest difference." I don't believe it.
I saw him in his studio a short time before his death.
He complained of his illness, and especially of insomnia.
He told me that he had fallen into the habit of rising very
early and going into the street and jumping on to the
first 'bus that come along, for the sake of the air. Strat
ford, Peckham Rye, Islington, Brixton, Highgate or
Whitechapel, East or West, North or South — its
destination, fashionable or unfashionable, made no dif
ference to him. This was after "Trilby" had filled his
pockets: he could have easily afforded a carriage, but
he was simple and economical in his tastes. While
we talked he was working on a drawing which displayed
his talents undimmed and undiminished. It would
have been impossible for him to sanction deception.

[210]

XIII
GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

BOUGHTON, the painter, declared London to
be the most hospitable city in the world. "You
need not be distinguished or of aristocratic birth,
but you must be interesting or have done something
interesting — that's all they ask here," he said, speaking
of the passports necessary for social recognition.

Without going as far as Boughton, I think there is
no other city in the world where one may meet such
diversified people under one roof as there, where even
modest achievement gains a foothold for itself in the
company of prelates and patricians, statesmen and
J leaders of the professions, both learned and artistic. ,
Literature, science, and art are recognized socially to
a greater extent than elsewhere, though, to be sure,
there are some houses which, more than others, restrict
themselves to people of their own class and political or
religious affiliation.

Let me recall a house in Harley Street where at lun
cheon, dinner, or in the drawing-room you were sure
to meet most of the celebrities of the day. There you
might see the dapper Lord Roberts, the taciturn Kitch
ener, and the vivacious Wolseley. Whatever party
was in power, whether the prime minister was Mr.
Gladstone, oracular and gracious, or Lord Salisbury,
reticent and cold, or Mr. Balfour, debonair, smiling, and
suave — the prime minister came, and between him and

[ail],

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

a duchess might be placed Henry Irving (one could never
meet him that he did not ask one to something, to supper
in the Beefsteak Room or to a tremendous dinner),
or Ellen Terry (who to the children of the house was
always "Aunt Nellie")? or George Grossmith, or Lord
Kelvin, or Lord Leigh ton, or the lord chief justice; while
somewhere down the table you might find a new-born
dramatist whose piece had just been produced, or a
young novelist who had done something out of the com
mon, or some one like Burnham, the American scout,
after his return from service against the Boers in South
Africa. Trojan and Tyrian sat peacefully at the same
table — judges and barristers, Liberals and Conserv
atives, Irish Nationalists and Unionists, such as Colonel
Sanderson, the belligerent member for Ulster; ambas
sadors, editors, and actors. But no one was there who
had not won distinction of some kind.

I will call the hostess Lady B . Punch had a

picture of Stanley in the African bush with a bushman
saluting Mm as he pushed through the jungle.

"We have met before," says the bushman, to the
surprise of the explorer.

"Indeed! Where?"

"At Lady B - -V

One day, when I was making a call, we spoke of a brill
iant and erratic man who had come to grief in a recent
scandal. He had been convicted of perjury, and had
disappeared from the haunts in New York and London
where his wit had made him welcome.

With a sly look from her husband to me, she said:
"He was so nice, and isn't it a pity? But I dare say
that the next time you come to England you'll find him
here again."

1*12]

GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

"Never!" cried her husband, who was one of the most
distinguished of English judges. "I" — with extreme
emphasis on the pronoun — "I draw the line at those
who have been in jail."

"Oh, don't be so narrow, dear," she protested. "They
are the most interesting people in the world."

Diversified as the guests were and dissimilar in creed,
station, politics, and occupations, the influence of her
personality was always sufficient to reconcile them and
interest them in one another. Politics and religion were
of course, always eschewed in conversation, but ample
latitude was given for the amicable discussion of other
topics. As an instance of this freedom, I remember that
at one of the dinners, which included several peers, an
aggressive an,d satirical young man who edited one of
the leading English reviews declared: "There's noth
ing I enjoy more than rejecting an article by a member
of the House of Lords. He's sure to be a duffer!"

Did their lordships bridle and darken? Did the
others show anxiety — the hostess alarm? Not a bit
of it. Everybody laughed.

"You do occasionally publish articles by such people, the
Duke of Marlborough for instance," one of the peers sug
gested, referring not to the present duke but to his father.

"Ah, yes! But see what a blackguard he is! He's
quite eligible on that account."

Thereupon he launched out into derision of England.
As all who ride in omnibuses know, the scale of fares in
England is often based on the distance between one
tavern and another, as between the Red Lion and the
Angel, or between the Cat and the Fiddle and the Ele
phant and Castle. "The only country in the world
that measures its stages from pub to pub," he cried scorn-

[213]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

fully, making this but one count in a comprehensive
indictment of England's depravity. Nobody minded.
They all took him humorously. He was one of the
successes of the dinner. And I may add that, of all
people, the Englishman of modern society is the least
touchy under criticism. He likes nothing more than
raillery against his national foibles. And this critic
was a professional railer; he was then the editor of an
important review.

One night I sat at the right of Lord Randolph Churchill,
who was only one chair removed from the host, and the
conversation between them turned on the difficulties
of public speaking. "Have you ever been embarrassed
by finding that after telling your audience there were
three points to which you particularly wished to call
their attention, and elaborating the first two, you could
not remember a word of what you meant to say on
the third?"

The question was asked by the host.

Lord Randolph was then plainly a doomed and shat
tered man. He shook as if in a palsy; his voice was
woolly and stuttering, almost unintelligible. The ladies
had retired to the drawing-room, and he put on the table
before him a case of cigarettes, which he smoked greedily.
Only half the case held cigarettes; the other half was
filled with cotton wool, a fresh piece of which he ram
med into his amber holder for each smoke, his purpose
being, I suppose, to reduce the nicotine. But notwith
standing his battered appearance, his mind seemed as
acute as ever.

'Yes," he replied, out of a cloud of smoke,
"that has happened to me more than once, but it
never gave me trouble. I found an easy way out.

[2141

GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

* Gentlemen,' I have said to them, 'I told you that there
were three things which I desired to emphasize. I
have mentioned two, only two. Much more, very
much more could be said, but I appeal to your intel
ligence. Is it necessary for me to go any further? to
waste any more of your time or my own on a question,
the answer to which is so obvious? Haven't I said
enough to convince you as fully as I am convinced my
self?' They have been quite satisfied with this, and
while they were applauding I have swung into another
part of the subject. Gross duplicity, but it has saved
me as, sometimes, only duplicity will do."

At another dinner I sat next to a plump and florid
lady of most discomposing urgency. I had not met her
before, and was ignorant even of her name. She preened
herself for a moment, and then, without any prelim
inaries beyond a glance down the table, a pick at her
skirt, and a touch of her tiara, plunged the question, with
her eyes disturbingly focused on mine: "Do you believe
in platonic love?"

It struck me that this was not quite fair — that she
ought to have given me some warning. With a con
sciousness of fatuity and futility, I shambled into the
reply, "Let me think about it, but in the meantime
hadn't you better ask Lord B - - ? "

I had presence of mind enough, at all events, to refer
her to the proper quarter for information. Lord B -
had the misfortune, as he put it, to preside in that court
which is more likely than any other experience to make
a cynic of a man.

"Lord B do you believe in platonic love?"

He lost no time in his answer: "I have heard of it,
but I never met a case of it in the divorce court."

[215]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

He was one of the most delightful men I have ever
had the good fortune to meet; lofty in thought and
dignified in bearing, impressive in appearance and
in voice, simple in taste and manner, kind beyond words,
and, like his wife, never happier than when surrounded
by their multitudinous friends.

Strange as it may seem, the judges who try divorce
cases in England are also judges of probate and of

admiralty. I remember Lord B saying to me, in

reference to an admiralty case he had tried, that the
only conclusion you could come to from the evidence in
cases of collision at sea was that no collision had occurred,
because by the testimony, the captain and crew of each
ship had strictly and scrupulously obeyed the rules of
the road, so that collision must have been impossible.

Taking the liveliest interest in his maritime cases,
he decided on one occasion to make a personal test of
the colour sense of two captains who were in dispute
before him, and took them with him to those disastrous
Channel shoals, the Goodwin Sands, near the estuary of
the Thames, where passes inward and outward the most
important part of the empire's traffic. Neither of the
men could distinguish in the dark between the reds and
greens of the steering-lights, and they were also be
wildered by the vagaries of the transmission of sound
through fogs.

Most of the judges and many barristers were, of
course, frequent among the guests of that house. I
have been at the Royal Courts of Justice in the afternoon,
and watched them, gowned and bewigged, at their
solemn work — the judges precise, austere, portentous,
Rhadaman thine; the barristers deferential, ingratiating,
and all attention. Then they have assembled at dinner

[216]

GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

in the evening, like Olympians descending from their
pedestals, as worldly-wise, as merry, and as familiar
as common mortals. Who could have been more human
and amusing than the late Lord Chief Justice Russell
of Killowen (once Sir Charles Russell), a stately, hand
some man of commanding presence; or his successor,
the present Lord Chief Justice Alverstone, who, when
he can be persuaded to sing after dinner, may select
W. S. Gilbert's nonsensical song from "Trial by Jury,"
and rattle it off with the greatest spirit --the song in
which the judge describes his early days when he had

A couple of shirts and a collar or two,
And a ring that looked like a ruby.

The late Justice Day was another guest, he upon
whose name was obvious and easy play. In crimi
nal trials he was so severe that he became " Judgment
Day"; when he married, * Wedding Day"; at Bristol,
"Day of Reckoning"; and one day when he was seen to
nod on the bench, "Day of Rest." Once, when he was
trying a case, a prolix barrister tried his patience, and
at the end of a long and tedious speech spoke of some bags
which were in question. "They might, me lud, have
been full bags, or half -full bags, or again they might
have been empty bags."

"Quite so, quite so," the judge assented, adding
dryly and significantly: "Or they might have been wind
bags."

On one occasion the conversation turned to the
thoroughness of the administration of the law in Great
Britain. "We sweat the law in England to get all the
justice out of it we can," declared a vivacious gentleman
who sat next to me, and I infer that no one doubted his

[217]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

sincerity or the truth of what he said. He soon drifted
into a very different topic, and showed his preference for
it — the turf. He was called " the sporting judge," and it
was whispered that at dawn on the days before the Derby
you could find him in mufti on Epsom Downs, a cloth
cap on his head, following the horses as they were exer
cised, and making up his mind about them before he
took the train to town for his seat on the bench. He
was jokingly asked for "tips," and, after protesting that
they were worth nothing, offered one "for a considera
tion." What was the "consideration" to be ? "The
best golf ball that can be bought in England."

Gossip said that his knowledge of the turf had helped
him to the bench. At the races, the wife of a lord chan
cellor asked him to put a trifle for her on a horse of his
own selection. He did so, and won. When he handed
the winnings to her she complimented him.

"What an excellent judge you are."

And, as he bowed, he whispered, "Please say that to
the lord chancellor. I am not as good a judge as he can
make me."

His appointment followed. But that was probably
a mere coincidence, if it was not invented out of whole
cloth for the sake of the story. He was an ornament
to the bench, learned and enlightened, witty, human —
a popular judge, if such a thing can be.

"You'll be kind to us if any of us are brought before
you?" some one inquired. His face, as mobile as an
actor's, wrinkled, and he pricked the questioner with
his poignant eyes. "I shall surely see that justice is
done," he replied dryly, leaving an implication, tacit
but unescapable, that innocence would not be taken
for granted.

[218]

GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

That a man in his position should be an avowed
lover of the turf may ruffle American prejudices, but
it is to be remembered that horse-racing is the national
sport of the United Kingdom; it attracts all classes, and
nearly every man, from king to cabman, puts "a bit on
the 'osses."

Argument and long speeches being discouraged, the
talk at such houses is likely to be desultory; one often
wished that one could have an expansion of what came
to one only in provoking fragments. There were flares,
without lasting illumination. A ball was neatly thrown
and caught, and while one was admiring the skill with
which two players were handling it between them, it
passed to the other end of the table and dropped out
of sight.

The late Lord Dufferin came in to luncheon very late
one day, and after he had apologized to the hostess,
he whispered to me that he had been detained at his
home by the late Earl of Kimberley. "A wonderful
man — a fascinating man! It is amazing how much
he knows. He knows everything — everything! — all
the corners of the earth and all the men in it. Except,"
— a pause — "except when to stop."

Discretion of that kind is essential in London now
adays. Doctor Johnson would not be tolerated, and
Macaulay, rightly indignant, would go home surcharged
with the undistributed and pent-up encyclopaedic erudi
tion which a frivolous world, unappreciative of its needs,
turns its back on.

Of course a few bores were there, but they were rare.
They were apt to be of the kind that favours the paradox
and the inversion, the fashionable trick of flouting the
orthodox and the conventional, and saying the exact

[219]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

opposite of what is expected. Sometimes that passes for
wit, or honest revolt, but it takes an Oscar Wilde, or
a Shaw to make it illusive and more than a transparent
and laborious trick.

Ada Rehan was another frequent guest — "Aunt Ada"
to the children, who were as much at home behind the
scenes in the evening with her, or with "Aunt Nellie,"
as they were in their own house.

The stage in England is a part of society. Not long ago I
picked up a century-old biographical dictionary of actors,
and looked up their parentage. They nearly all were the
offspring of people in humble circumstances, who also
had been actors or innkeepers, wig makers, and small
tradesmen. Refer to the last edition of "Who's Who,"
and see how many of them are college and university men,
who have left the law or medicine, or the army or the
navy, to wear the sock and buskin without reproach.
You meet actors constantly in English society, not merely
those who are famous, like Irving or Tree, but also those
who are novices in the profession. I remember seeing
Henry Irving implored by a personage of the highest rank
to visit him, and how curtly and with ill-concealed indif
ference Irving "turned down" — the slang somehow fits
the incident — what might have seemed to be a con
spicuous honour. And some of us are left who can recall
a dinner at which a lord chief justice, when invited to
respond to the toast of "England," replied that as Irving
was present he was the better man for the ceremony.

Nor do I forget how Sarah Bernhardt once kept us
waiting nearly an hour for luncheon. For the rest of us
it may not have mattered, but Mr. Balfour was there
detained beyond his usual hour for getting to the House
of Commons. When she came in, radiant and childishly

GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

unconscious of delinquency, we all could have excused
him if he had revealed a little coolness and impatience.
He had been restless and anxious before, but as soon as
she came he fell under her spell, as Antony under Cleo
patra's, and, without a word or look of upbraiding,
devoted himself to her for fully another half hour —
meanwhile leaving us in apprehension lest the empire
should disintegrate in the absence of that astute and faith
ful helmsman.

One could not help contrasting Ellen Terry and Ada
Rehan, the former so volatile and demonstrative, so
suggestive of her art, the latter so shy and uncommuni
cative, so sparing in the use of that melodious voice
which thrilled us in the theatre. I once urged Miss
Rehan to write her reminiscences.

"Ah, no!" she sighed. "I'm not a writer; I'm nothing
but an actress. I believe the cobbler is wise in sticking
to his last."

She was always unaffectedly diffident as to her abili
ties, even when in her ascendancy she had three coun
tries at her feet.

One saw many contrasts there — Thomas Hardy, small,
retiring, sensitive, melancholy, self-effacing, and Harold
Frederic, an overgrown boy of thirty-odd, exuberant,
beaming, self-confident, and cocksure, who could talk
about himself and his achievements by the hour and
make us glow over them as much as he himself did.
What would have offended in another became myste
riously charming in him. He made egotism pleasant
by hypnotizing us into his own point of view, and his
glory became ours.

When he told us how he had made Grover Cleveland
President of the United States, we had to believe him;

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

and when he declared that if he chose he could be Presi
dent himself, it did not seem in the least ridiculous. He
had the complacency and assurance of a boastful boy,
and yet, instead of being odious, his defects were trans
muted and struck us only as a vein of engaging and
humorous ingenuousness.

After all, self-appreciation is sincere, while self-
depreciation may be open to suspicion. People
differed about him, as they do about all of us, but most
of us found him lovable without shutting our eyes to
his faults, which were those of irresponsiblity, fortuity,
and instability, rather than of premeditation or hardness.

Generous and infectiously good-humoured with those
he cared for, he was a fierce champion of their perfection
and would not compromise on less than the admission
of that. He did not discriminate when friendship
bound him; the enemy of a friend became his enemy, and
he espoused his friend's cause as relentlessly as though
it had been his own. He was always holding a brief
for some one.

Only great persuasion could bring him out to such
parties as I have been describing. He had a coterie
of his own which he preferred — authors, politicians,
painters, and actors. You could find him at the Savage
Club, or the National Liberal Club, among the Radicals
and Irish Nationalists. Most of his work was done in
dingy and haunted chambers in Furnival's Inn, and some
of it in the suburban villa he had at Surbiton, which
he called Oneida Lodge, after his native place, a name
distorted, much to his amusement, by those who came
to the back door, into "One-eyed Lodge."

It was strange to see the Marquis of Dufferin and
Frederic at the same table, for in Frederic's novel, "The

[222]

GLIMPSES OF LONDON SOCIETY

Market Place," that nobleman — under a fictitious
name, of course — had been portrayed as the dupe of
the upstart financier, whose original was plainly drawn
from Whittaker Wright, the blower of bubbles, the pro
digious swindler, who, when he found English law inexor
able, poisoned himself in the dock as soon as a long-
term sentence on him had been pronounced.

The novel could not have been pleasant to Lord Duf-
ferin, for, though his counterfeit was illusory in the text,
the illustrator drew an unmistakable likeness of him in
the pictures; the graceful figure, the high-brpwed, intel
lectual head, and the courtier-like mien. You could
never have seen him for a moment without recognizing
in him a distinguished man. There was not a bit of
pomposity about him. He was full of humour and sym
pathy; but below the smiling surface one could perceive
the diplomat, cautious, discriminating, and deliberate,
who made all his contacts provisionally and sensed them
through invisible antennae. That in the end he could
become the dupe of such a man as Whittaker Wright is
incomprehensible and inexplicable. He emerged from
that scandal with his honour untarnished and his fortune
gone; it probably was the irreparable wound to his pride
that killed him.

I must not leave the reader with the idea that
Thomas Hardy is always sombre. I think he resents
being classed as a pessimist. The humour that flashes
in his novels streaks and illumines his conversa
tion also. One day we left a luncheon party together,
and he looked comically at the ruffled and veined nap
of his hat. "I had meant to get a new one," he sighed,
"but then my publisher sent my copyright account,
and I couldn't."

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

At another luncheon, the host exhibited some trophies
of travel, including the war club of Sitting Bull. As
Hardy swung the weapon, which taxed his strength,
he murmured, "How much I should like to have that
in my hand when I encounter the critic who calls ' Jude
the Obscure,' 'Jude the Obscene'!"

A little laughter did not relieve the embarrassment
of some of us who heard him, for the culprit was among
us. She was the lady who had sat next to him.

The company always included many delightful women,
and I remember the consternation caused among them
one day by Burnham, the scout. He explained that he
attributed his success as a scout to the acuteness of his
sense of smell; it was like a bloodhound's. "There's
no one here to-day," he affirmed, "who at any time
anywhere in the future I could not recognize in the dark.
Yes, I could tell you, and you, and you," nodding at an
alluring group in modish apparel, "by the way you
smell."

For an awful moment the conversation flagged.

Sir Charles Wyndham, brisk, natty, and sparkling,
with a tonic autumnal air about him, came one day a
week ahead of the hour for which he had been invited.
He did not mind it in the least, and was, of course,
welcomed. The hostess inferred that as he had come
then, he would consider the later date as cancelled. Not
he! Next week he reappeared at the hour originally
appointed, and, after some confusion and explanations,
he cheerfully and imperturbably declared that no fur
ther misunderstandings could possibly occur; "for," he
said, "I shall come every week from now on, and
so nobody can be disappointed."

XIV
CHARLES READE AND MRS. OLIPHANT

AT author nas no longer any occasion to blow his
own trumpet. For a consideration any literary
agent will sound it for him in blasts loud enough
to bring down anything, old or new, the walls of Jericho
itself or an American "skyscraper." He may be nat
urally shy and modest, a humble creature unpractised
in affairs, dubious of his merits, ignorant of prices cur
rent, incredulous that his novel or poem can have any
pecuniary value. He may be diffidence itself in private,
but when he puts himself into the hands of a literary
agent he is sure to be introduced to the editor by that
exigent delegate as a paragon of the special merit that
"sells," and his commercial value is extolled and empha
sized more than all else.

"Probably you are aware that Mr. Jones commands
better terms than any other living author," the agent
writes to the editor, forgetting that he has used precisely
the same formula in regard to Smith and Robinson a
little earlier, and that editors are not always fools, or
without memories, and a knowledge of their own
trade. "I propose," the agent continues, when he
calls, "that, the serial rights and the rights of drama
tization being reserved by my client, you shall pay
him one shilling and sixpence royalty for every
copy of the book sold at six shillings, and that you
shall at once advance him several hundred pounds

[225]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

on account of royalties that may become due in the
future."

As he listens, the editor droops in his chair, while the
agent smiles and produces ingenious figures to prove that
the demands are not extortionate, but leave a possible
though remote profit to him, the party of the second
part. Then, if the manuscript is what he feels he must
have because it is really good, or because it will serve
for advertisement, he submits, after a struggle for abate
ment, biting his lips, perhaps, as he does so, and reviling
what he feels to be in the language of the Wild West,
a "hold-up."

It is not to be inferred that every author, or the average
author, is as simple as Jones, personally, or needs an
agent to proclaim him. Some of them — I do not say
all — are as astute in driving a bargain as any literary
agent can be, and come into the market on the same
level and in the same spirit as a seller of so much merchan
dise. "I write," said one not long ago, "as if there was
no such thing as money in the world, and when I sell
I sell as if money were the only thing in the world" —
an attitude not indefensible and not uncommon. The
publisher complains, often in a strain of sentiment and
pathos, and I have known even a literary agent to say
that the author expects everything and objects to every
thing. "The only thing that satisfies him is being paid,
and, if possible, being paid twice over." Undoubtedly
he has become more sordid, or it may be fairer to say,
more business-like, under the influence and instruction
of the agent, who occasionally finds a once tractable and
complaisant client transformed into a Frankenstein.
I like, however, to see the author having his turn, for
until recent years he has been the under dog in the

[2261

CHARLES READE AND MRS. OLIPHANT

struggle for an equitable division of the money his work
has produced. The publisher has often had the cream
though not always.

Tennyson, especially, and Thackeray and Dick
ens knew how to take care of themselves. We smile as
we recall Thackeray in his early days making a desper
ate effort to dissemble his rejoicing at an offer much
larger than he expected, and before him was Gibbon who
instructed Lord Sheffield as to how that nobleman should
negotiate with Nichols, the publisher, in his behalf.
His lordship was to speak of the prospective book as if
the idea came from himself, "as it is most essential that
I be solicited, and do not solicit." "Then," wrote
Gibbon, "if he (Nichols) kindles at the thought and
eagerly claims my alliance, you (Lord Sheffield) will begin
to hesitate. *I am afraid, Mr. Nichols,' you say, 'that we
can hardly persuade my friend to engage in so great a
work. Gibbon is old, and rich, and lazy. However,
you may make the trial."

Was the trick ever played more cannily? Could any
salt for a bird's tail have more efficacy? Still I think
that among authors in their business affairs there are and
have been more geese than such foxes as Gibbon was
in this instance. Why should we wonder if, at the end
of a long period of ignorance or of indifference to com
mercial values, they strain them out of due pro
portion when they discover them, and lose sight of
all else? The corollary is inevitable, and equity in
suspense.

All this is a roundabout approach to saying that in
a varied editorial experience of more years than I can
acknowledge with equanimity, I met only one author
who thought that what we offered him for some of his

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

work was too much; and, strange to relate, that was
Charles Reade.

He had then lost his pretty house in Knightsbridge,
that "Naboth's Vineyard," as he called it, against the
loss of which he had fought with characteristic energy
through long years in both the courts and parliament,
and had moved to Shepherd 's Bush, a choice that seemed
to me to be unaccountable and incredible. Of all places
in the world, one wondered, why Shepherd's Bush?
And why Blomfield Villas of all places there? As I
sought the house I thought that I must have made some
mistake, and that none of those rows of stucco-fronted,
small, vulgar, utterly undistinguished domiciles, de
tached and semi-detached, in stony, pocket-handkerchief
gardens, could possibly contain the great man I was look
ing for. The neighbourhood spoke of city clerks, shop
men, and retired people — not "nice" retired people,
half-pay officers and such, but retired plumbers, green
grocers, buttermen, and publicans, or, as they like to be
called, "licensed victuallers." Here and there one of
them could be seen pottering, shirt-sleeved, in his crowded
and heterogeneous garden, with an air of stolid satis
faction, his old briar fondly held between his pursy lips,
and the fat of plethoric nourishment shining on his face,
a solid, documentary proof that I was astray. When I
came to the number given to me I hesitated before I
rang the bell, I was so confident of the futility of my
inquiry, and the reply of the maid who answered the bell
— "Yes, this is Mr. Reade 's" — had to be repeated
before it penetrated me.

Yes, this was Mr. Reade 's, and I was shown into a
littered and cramped study, corresponding to the draw
ing-room of the other houses, its shelves loaded by a

I mi

CHARLES READE AND MRS. OLIPHANT

series of scrap-books bursting with clippings on every
subject from newspaper articles. Occasionally, perhaps,
he found inspiration and suggestions in them, for he
always insisted that truth was stranger than fiction — and
in that I might concur, taking Blomfield Villas, as an
example — but my impression is that those time-stained
and bulging archives had their chief use in confounding
the critics who ventured to challenge what seemed to be
impossibilities in his works. Was it in "Foul Play," or
another story, that a white whale appeared? And did
some scribe say that a white whale could not have been
in the latitude and longitude given? Down came one of
the scrap-books, and down its weight on the head of that
critic, leaving him not a breath for rebuttal, or a leg to
stand on. Within it was a faded extract from the log
of a ship that had reported the phenomenon in the very
spot Reade had placed it. And I believe that in such an
achievement as this he took as much pride as in one of
the best chapters of "The Cloister and the Hearth." If
he could not demolish them he loved to confuse those
who "called him down," and the scrap-books were his
arsenal.

I thought, in the timidity of my inexperience at that
period, he meant to assault me as he burst into the room,
seeming to bring with him a gale that rattled the house
and all its doors and windows. There was a lot of what
Mr. H. G. Wells calls "projectile violence" about him.
I had written a little article of badinage in the Atlantic
Monthly pointing out some amusing errors of his in the
American scenes of "The Wandering Heir," or "Single-
heart and Doubleface," and for a moment I feared —
forgetting that it was unsigned — my sins were to over
take me there and then. But the tornado was of sound

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

only, the breath of an impulsive and impetuous tempera
ment, which at heart was essentially fine and gentle.
Passing, it left in its place a presence which, though
dogmatic, was far from disagreeable.

Following that visit to Blomfield Villas, I had a long
letter from him which seems to me to be an epitome of
the complex variety of his qualities, and in printing it
I should explain in reference to one of its passages that
I had asked him to write a serial story for the Youth's
Companion, whose editors then thought an amorous
interest unwise in view of the precocity of some of their
readers:

Hotel Splendide, Cannes, 28 Jan'y, '84.
DEAR SIR:

I beg to thank you for the munificent sum you sent me through Mr.
Liston; it was too much for a mere dictated article of which you had not the
monopoly; and shall be reconsidered if we do business together.

I must now tell you the real reason of my delaying so long to write to you :
Your often repeated wish to have something from my pen, and your liberality
had made me desirous to let you have something good; now I have observed
that it is extremely difficult for any author to increase the circulation of an
established periodical, and, when it is done, fiction is very seldom the happy
instrument. However, I have by me, in manuscript, certain true narratives
called "Bible Characters," which I think will do a magazine more good than
any number of fictions. The subject, of course, is old, but it is as good as
new and better; because, up to this date, the treatment of such subjects by
French, German, and English writers has been all a mistake, and a truly
wonderful one. I cannot in the compass of a letter explain to you the many
vital blunders in their treatment: I must confine myself to saying that it
is so; and that everybody will see it when my manuscripts are printed.

Well, I must now tell you, under the seal of the most strict and

honourable confidence, that I sent to a short preliminary discourse

and two Bible characters that pass for small characters only because the
divines who have handled them have literally no insight into character what
ever. The editor received this instalment of the subject with open arms, but
he has been shelving my fictitious stories, and editing me, making unjusti
fiable and very silly alterations, so that my text and my English copyrights

[230]

CHARLES READE AND MRS. OLIPHANT

seem neither of them to be safe in that magazine. I therefore requested
him to send me back all my copy without exception, and I intended to do you
a good turn with the Bible characters, both in your periodical and in book
form; and I thought long before this my manuscripts would have come home;

but probably my old friends Messrs. , the publishers, took alarm, and

objected to part with them; at all events, the manuscripts were retained,
most charming excuses made, and I was requested to reconsider the matter.
I was not, on my part, the least disposed to quarrel, it would have been
ungrateful; I therefore gave them the alternative under very stringent con
ditions — no editing, no interruption — when once I begin — and, in short
no nonsense of any kind. Now, if they accept these terms they will have the
works, and if they do not they will lose them and find their mistake.

If they let them slip, you can have them if you like; if they retain them, I
see my way to write you a strong story, but there must be love in it: not
illicit love, nor passionate love, but that true affection between the sexes
without which it is impossible to interest readers for more than a few pages.
Pray consider the subject, thus confined; it cannot be long hidden from
the young that there is an innocent and natural love between the sexes,
and, in plain truth, successful fiction is somewhat narrow; love is its turn
pike road; you may go off that road into highways, into by-ways, and woods,
and gather here and there choice flowers of imagination that do not grow
at the side of that road; but you must be quick and get back again to your
turnpike pretty soon, or you will miss the heart of the reader.

When I return to England and have my books about me, I could write
you one good article about men and animals, their friendships, and how the
lives of men have been sometimes taken and saved by quadrupeds, fishes,
birds, and even reptiles, and could wind up with an exquisite story of how
a man's life was once saved by a ladybird; but one such article, with my
habits of condensation, would exhaust the whole vein, whereas fiction and
biography are unlimited.

Then, as to the remuneration you were kind enough to offer, I do not see
how you can afford $ — per page. Publishers will pay for their whistle,
like other people, and will buy a name for more than it is worth unless it is
connected with work that would be valuable without a name. In my view
of things, nothing is good that is not durable, and no literary business can
be durable if the author takes all the profit.

In spite of bronchitis, and some strange disorder in the intestines, „ am

fulfilling an engagement to write a serial story in , and I hope to finish

it in a month, but I do not think I shall ever again undertake to write a
story of that length. After all, condensation is a fine thing, and perhaps
a story long enough to excite an interest, and paint characters vividly,
a story in which there is no conversation, but only dialogue which rapidly

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

advances the progress of the action, is more likely to be immortal than those
more expanded themes which betray us into diffuseness.

Please make allowances in this letter for any defects arising from dictation.
I am not yet a good hand at that practice.

Yours faithfully,

CHARLES READE.

In that letter we have the man as he was, as he saw
himself, and as he revealed himself: Knowing better
what a periodical wanted than its editors, and more of
the Bible than the theologian: level-headed in such
axioms as "nothing is good that is not durable " ; arrogant
as to conditions and fair-minded as to rewards ; broad and
liberal here, narrow and prejudiced there; sound in
business; direct in method; all, and above all, imperious
and confidently omniscient, a nineteenth century Don
Quixote.

"The truth is that fiction is a more severe mistress than
people think," he wrote to me later. "An imaginative
writer often begins his career with subjects independent
of sexual love, but his readers, and especially his female
readers, soon show him that they won't stand it, and so
they drag him out of the by-paths of invention and
force him into the turnpike road, until at last their
habit becomes his, and I suppose his mind accepts
the groove."

James Payn had his little joke at the exclusion of sexual
love from a story he attempted for the same periodical.
"Never," he wrote, "since the Israelite was requested
to make bricks without straw by his Egyptian master,
was employe so put to it. I am bound to say that,
though amply remunerated, that story" (his own) "did
not turn out a success. Think of Hamlet with not only
the prince left out, but also the ghost! My position

CHARLES READE AND MRS. OLIPHANT

seems to me to be similar to that of woman in conversa
tion. Almost everything that is really interesting is
tabooed to her."

I may add that our women contributors never found
any difficulty in or objection to the restriction, nor did
the interest of their work suffer from it. Mrs. Macquoid,
the author of "Patty," whom I used to see at her old
house in the King's Road, Chelsea, where she lived for
many years; Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, a girl at eighty;
Louisa M. Alcott, retired at Concord; and Mrs. Oliphant
in her lodgings in Ebury Street or at Windsor or
Wimbledon — they never murmured against Moses, or
complained that they were asked to make bricks
without straw, because passion and superstition were
eschewed.

Mrs. Oliphant gave us some of her best work, and that,
as I appraise it, came very near to the best of any woman
novelist in English literature. The little it lacked in the
measure of perfection could be charged to the harassing
conditions of pressure and distraction under which it was
produced. Her characters were never wraiths or puppets,
or like the stamped patterns on wall-papers: they lived
for us; we saw them back and front, within and without,
through their bodies to their souls; and when they died
they filled us with such a sense of desolation and of echo
ing void in the house of mourning as we received from
that vivid scene of death in her "Country Gentleman."
The wolf howled at her door, while her children clung to
her skirts like the daughters of the horse-leech, crying,
"Give, give." Much of her writing was done late at
night. She told me that this had become a habit with
her since her children's infancy, when it was necessary
to have them in bed before she took up her pen, and it

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

persisted after they grew up. A glass of sherry sustained
her in it.

"Yes," she complained, "it has been my fate to be
credited with the equivocal virtue of industry, a quality
excellent in morals, but alas! so little satisfactory in art."

She sustained herself under what she vividly called a
"cheerful despair." Nothing in her stories, vibrant with
the understanding of anguish as they are, is more pathetic
than her own account of her situation after her husband 's
death. The Black woods referred to are, of course, those
of the famous Edinburgh house:

I was poor, having only my own exertions to depend on, though always
possessing an absolute-foolish courage (so long as the children were well,
my one formula) in life and providence. But I had not been doing well for
some time. It will perhaps not be wondered at, considering the circumstances.
My contributions sent from Italy, where I had passed a year watching my
husband's waning life, had been, as I can see through the revelations of
Blackwood letters, pushed about from pillar to post, these kind-hearted men
not willing to reject what they knew to be so important to me, yet caring but
little for them, using them when there happened to be a scarcity of material;
and after my return things were little better. . . . Why I should have
formed the idea that in these circumstances, when there was every appear
ance that my literary gift, such as it was, was failing me, they would be likely
to entertain a proposal from me for a serial story, I can scarcely now tell;
but I was rash and in need. ... I walked up to George Street, up the
steep hill, with my heart beating, not knowing (though I might very well
have divined) what they would say to me. There was, indeed, only one
thing they could say. They shook their heads : they were very kind, very
unwilling to hurt the feelings of the poor young woman, with the heavy
widow's veil hanging about her like a cloud. No; they did not think it was
possible. I remember very well how they stood against the light, the major
tall and straight, John Blackwood with his shoulders hunched up in his
more careless bearing, embarrassed and troubled by what they saw and no
doubt guessed in my face, while on my part every faculty was absorbed in
the desperate pride of a woman not to let them see me cry, to keep in until
I could get out of their sight. ... I went home to find my little ones
all gay and sweet, and was occupied by them for the rest of the day in a sort

CHARLES READE AND MRS. OLIPHANT

of cheerful despair — distraught, yet as able to play as ever (which they say
is part of a woman's natural duplicity and dissimulation). But when they
had all gone to bed, and the house was quiet, I sat down — and I don't
know when, or if at all, I went to bed that night; but next day (I think)
I had finished and sent up to the dread tribunal in George Street a short
story, which was the beginning of a series of stories called the "Chronicles
of Carlingford," which set me up at once and established my footing in the
world.

[2351

JAMES PAYN

ONLY the other day I was amused by a paragraph,
the writer of which, searching for a figure to
illustrate something dead — very dead — sat
isfied himself with "as dead as yesterday's novel."
In the flood of modern fiction, little — minnow or herring
— survives, and what is good is often swamped by what
is merely new.

Thirty years ago James Payn was one of the "best
sellers," as the word goes. His novels reappeared,
after the first three- volume edition for the circulating
libraries had worn itself out, in cloth at six shillings,
and still later in those old-fashioned picture boards at
two shillings or half a crown, which made a gaudy and
eye-catching display on every railway book-stall in
England.

In every colony and in America they were familiar.
One of them, "Lost Sir Massingbird," had an ex
traordinary vogue, which put him on a footing not far
behind that of Wilkie Collins and Miss Braddon. It had
been issued serially in a weekly, and had gladdened the
publisher's heart by doing what every publisher hopes
for whenever a manuscript is accepted — hopes for,
not with confidence, but with misgivings that experience
too often corroborates. It sent the circulation of that
periodical up by leaps and bounds, by thousands
of copies. The missing baronet eluded the reader pro-

[ 236 ]

JAMES PAYN

vokingly until the author in his denouement chose to
reveal him.

It established Payn commercially in the trade as a
money-maker, the only kind of author publishers wel
come: it charmed the young Duke of Albany, and fre
quently thereafter Payn became a guest at Claremont.
But he was more than a knitter of plots. He had a
fluid and limpid style, akin to that of Mr. Howells, as
airily natural, if less subtle, and, instead of the gravity
of Wilkie Collins, who was as ponderous as a judge on
the bench, he had an abounding and permeating humour
which was always peeping out and slyly laughing round
the corner. Perhaps he laughed in his sleeve at his
own melodrama, though he resented all criticism that
imputed a lack of painstaking in his work.

Humour was his strongest point, and it was lambent
humour, expressed in happy turns of thought and unex
pected inversions, over which one chuckled rather than
guffawed, as one does over Stockton's stories.

An example of this humour is an account he gave me
of a paper he edited while he was a cadet at Woolwich,
ostensibly for his fellow students, but really for his own
pleasure, in making known those early writings of his
which had no chance elsewhere. He had one chum
named Raymond, who could draw; another named
Jones, who could write like print; and a third named
Barker, who had a taste for finance.

Payn provided the literary part, which Raymond
illustrated, and Jones made as many copies as were
needed. The circulation of the paper was left to Barker,
who fixed the price at sixpence a copy. Their school
fellows did not appreciate the venture, but Barker was
the treasurer of the school and held in trust for the

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

scholars a certain fund out of which he had to give them
two shillings weekly for pocket-money. Seeing that
they would not buy the paper willingly, he calmly
deducted sixpence from each allowance, and gave a
copy of the paper to make up for it.

"The 'masses' never know what is good for them,"
Payn said, in referring to this, "and our school-fellows
were no exception to the rule; they called Barker a Jew,
and, so to speak, 'murmured against Moses/ He was
tall and strong, and fought at least half a dozen pitched
battles for the maintenance of his objects. I think he
persuaded himself, like Charles I, that he was really in
the right, and set down their opposition to mere 'im
patience of taxation,' but in the end they were one too
many for him, and, indeed, much more than one. He
fell fighting, no doubt, in the sacred cause of literature,
but also for his own sixpences, for we, the workers, never
saw one penny of them."

What of "Lost Sir Massingbird" now? At the book
sellers' you may ask in vain for it, or for any of the sev
enty-five or eighty novels he wrote, and the easiest way
to find it would be to uproot a dog-eared, brownish, smelly
and bethumbed copy from the shelf of some suburban
or provincial library, whose readers, when unable to get
the newest novel, quietly and without complaint divert
themselves and are happy with forsaken books for which
elsewhere there is "no call."*

Payn himself was more interesting than any of his
novels, and more of a " character" than any of his ficti
tious personages, though he was, in his virtues and in
his defects, only a typical Englishman of his class — one
of those who value above all things what is sensible and

* Since this was written, a sixpenny reprint of " Lost Sir Massingbird" has appeared.

[ 238 ] .

Courtesy of the S. S. McClure Co.

JAMES PAYNT

JAMES PAYN

what is sincere. Patient and generous with other faults
and impositions, he was militant against humbug in
every shape, and it was the only thing of which he was
suspicious and against which he was bitter. I write
of him as a friend and as an admirer, but I fear I must
confess that he discredited some things for no better
reason than his inability to understand or appreciate
them. He discredited every form of the occult, the
esoteric, the aesthetic, and the mystical. And in that
was he not sufficiently like thousands of his country
men to justify us in speaking of him as a type?

As a publisher's reader he rejected "John Inglesant,"
and never recanted his opinion of it, though he was hard
hit by its immediate acceptance and success through
another house. I shrink from saying how many conven
tional things he did not care for.

Educated at Eton, Woolwich, and Cambridge, he
hated Greek and never acquired a foreign language,
not even a tourist's French or Italian, as Sir Leslie
Stephen has said. Nor is he alone among Englishmen
there, if we are candid. I repeat that there are thousands
of others like him: Herbert Spencer did not swallow
all the classics, ancient or modern, and disparaged Homer,
Plato, Dante, Hegel, and Goethe. A smaller man than
the philosopher, Payn resembled him in courage and
frankness, and probably he did not overestimate the
number of people who admire books they do not read
and praise pictures they do not understand.

He did not thunder anathemas, like a Lawrence Boy-
thorn, against the things he challenged and opposed.
He spoke of them rather with a plaintive amazement
at their existence, and protested rather than denounced.
At the end of his charge his pale and mild face had the

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

troubled look of one who sees error only to grieve over
it. He was never boisterous, though he had a ringing
laugh. One day, at the Reform Club, that laugh dis
turbed a testy member, who said in a voice loud enough
to carry, as he meant it should, "That man has a mouth
like a gorilla's." Payn heard it, and instantly flung
over his shoulder the retort, "Yes, but I never could
swallow you."

Those of us who have the dubious blessing of an im
agination nearly always anticipate a meeting with the
people we have heard of or known only through cor
respondence, and, as I have already said, out of the slen
derest material, boldly draw imaginary portraits of them
which are curiously and fantastically wide of the mark.
I remember dining at the House of Commons one night
— one of many nights — with that most genial of hosts,
Justin M'Carthy, and being introduced to a tall, smiling,
hesitating man, who seemed embarrassed by an inex
plicable shyness. His smile had a womanly softness.
From his appearance it was possible to surmise a sort
of amiable ineffectiveness. I gasped and doubted my
ears when I caught his name. It was Charles Stewart
Parnell. I had always pictured him as stern, immutable,
forbidding, dark in colouring, and rigid in feature. That
was the impression that all his photographs gave, for
in his, as in all cases, photographs do not preserve or
convey complexions or the full value of expressions.
I am inclined to believe, however, that the real Parnell
was little different in character from what he seemed to
be in that glimpse I had of him in the House. His lieu
tenant and abettor in the stormy days and nights of
obstruction, F. Hugh O'Donnell, has since declared that
he, Parnell, was the very reverse of the strong and far-

[240]

JAMES PAYN

seeing statesman which popular legend and party cal
culation combined to invent. Long after his death,
Lord Morley has admitted that Parnell never possessed
a shred of constructive ability . . . "His distinction,
his Anglo-Irish lineage, connected with some of the best
patriotic traditions, had all pointed him out to the
undistinguished leaders of the vast hosts of national
discontent, who, without prestige themselves, all the
more eagerly desired a figure-head who should possess
that quality at least. Parnell's family pride and per
sonal vanity did the rest. He was literally incapable
of rejecting the tinsel crown, even on the terms of the
Land League. ... I knew that with all his weak
ness and all his shutting fast the eyes to hideous facts,
Parnell loathed his Land League surroundings. His con
tempt for his members of Parliament passed the limits
of common courtesy, and far exceeded the limits of
common prudence."

It is M'Carthy who tells of a man who, longing to
meet Herbert Spencer, sat next to him through a long
dinner without recognizing him.

"I thought I was to meet Spencer," he murmured
to his host.

"Haven't you met him? This is Herbert Spencer."

This — this quiet man at his elbow, whose diffidence
had made conversation impossible!

:<Yes, I am Herbert Spencer," the philosopher
admitted, in the deprecatory voice of a culprit.

Of course I made a guess at Payn when he invited me
to visit him at Folkestone, where, one summer in the
early eighties, he was sharing a villa near the Lees with
Sir John Robinson, then manager of the Daily News,
who was one of the most devoted and intimate of his

[241]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

friends. He was by my inference to be a dashing, flar
ing, sounding, facetious person, on the evidence of a
string of humorous stories he had gathered together
under the appropriate head of "In High Spirits/' I
had heard something of his escapades in the days when
he was a cadet at Woolwich — of how, stranded in Lon
don after a holiday, he had raised the money necessary
to take him and a friend back to the Academy by play
ing the part of a street preacher and passing his hat
among the crowd at the end of the service.

After leaving Woolwich he had been to Cambridge
with the intention of preparing for the Church — a facile
change of course taken without any change of heart
or stability of purpose. His natural bent toward litera
ture reasserted its claim, and it was fostered, cautiously
and temperately, by a friend and neighbour of his father's
who lived at Swallowfield, near Maidenhead. This was
Mary Russell Mitford, of "Our Village." She objected
to his making a professon of it, and recommended it
as an avocation, not as a vocation. He lent me a bundle
of her letters to him, all written in a microscopic hand,
more crabbed than his own became in later life, when it
resembled nothing more than the tracks of a fly escaping
from an inkpot. I have dozens of letters of his which
to this day are partly undeciphered. Not only was
Miss Mitford's writing small and angular, but after
filling all sides of the sheet with the closest lines, she
economized further by running postscripts edgewise all
along the margins and even on the flaps of the envelopes.

Miss Mitford's advice, by the way, is as good for any
literary aspirant now as it was for Payn when it was given,
sixty or seventy years ago, and it was reechoed long
afterward, in verification of her wisdom, by his own

[2421

JAMES PAYN

words: "There is no pursuit so doubtful, so full of risks,
so subject to despondency, so open to despair itself.
Oh, my young friend, with 'a turn for literature,' think
twice or thrice before committing yourself to it, or you
may bitterly repent, to find yourself where that 'turn'
may take you! The literary calling is an exceptional
one, and even at the best you will have trials and troubles
of which you dream not, and to which no other calling
is exposed."

Through her he made literary acquaintances. She
introduced him to Harriet Martineau, and Harriet
Martineau, in turn, introduced him (among others) to
De Quincey. At luncheon with De Quincey, he was
asked what wine he would take, and he was about to
pour out a glass of what looked like port from a decanter
near him, when the "opium-eater's" daughter whis
pered, "Not that." That was laudanum, and Payn
saw De Quincey himself drink glass after glass of it.

My guess at his appearance before our first meeting
proved to be wide of the mark. The door of the cab that
met me at the station was opened by one who had all
the marks of a scholarly country parson or a schoolmaster
— a pale, studious, almost ascetic face, with thin side-
whiskers, spectacled eyes, and a quiet, entreating sort
of manner. And his clothes were in keeping with the
rest — a jacket suit of rough black woollen cloth, topped
by a wide-brimmed, soft felt clerical hat. His appearance,
however, was deceptive. He was neither ascetic nor
bookish, and his pallor came from the ill-health that even
then had settled upon him in the form of gout and deaf
ness. His spirits were invincible. He made light of
his sufferings, as, for instance, when, speaking of his
deafness, he said that while it shut out some pleasant

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

sounds, it also protected him from many bores. He
loved a good story, and had many good stories to tell.
It was almost impossible to bring up any subject that
he would not discuss with whimsical humour, and his
point of view, always original and independent, was
untrammelled by any sense of deference to the opinion
of the majority.

One day the three of us drove over to Canterbury,
and with much persuasion Sir John and I induced him
to go with us to the cathedral. While the verger showed
us the sights, and we became absorbed in them, Payn
dragged behind. We stood at the foot of the steps
worn deep by the pilgrims to Becket's shrine. He
was sighing with fatigue and heedless of the verger's
reproving eye. Then we heard him whisper, "How I'd
like to sit on a tomb and smoke a pipe!"

After the visit to Folkestone I was seldom in London,
during the rest of his life, without seeing him, either at
his home in Warrington Crescent, with his devoted wife
and girls — one of whom married Mr. Buckle, the editor
of the Times — or at his office in Waterloo Place. He
was then editor of the Cornhill Magazine, and his room
was more like a pleasant study than a place of business.
A fire glowed in the grate even on warm days, and in the
afternoons the fragrance of tea sometimes mingled with
that of tobacco. He lived by the clock. His forenoons
were given to editorial work; then came luncheon at
the Reform Club, and an invariable game of whist —
the same players, day after day, year in, year out; another
hour or so at the office, and a cab to Warrington Crescent.

One day an unannounced caller, who had managed to
evade the porter down stairs, opened Payn's door. His
hair was long, and his clothes were shabby and untidy.

[244]

JAMES PAYN

He had a roll of papers in his hand. Payn, surmising
a poet and an epic several thousand lines long, looked up.
"Well, sir?"

"I've brought you something about sarcoma and

carcinoma.'3

" We are overcrowded with poetry — couldn't accept
another line, not if it were by Milton."

"Poetry!" the caller flashed. "Do you know any
thing about sarcoma and carcinoma?"

"Italian lovers, aren't they? "said Payn imperturbably.

The caller retreated, with a withering glance at the
editor. Under the same roof as the Comhill was the
office of a medical and surgical journal, and it was this
that the caller had sought for the disposal of a treatise on
those cancerous growths with the euphonious names
which, with a layman's ignorance, Payn ascribed to
poetry. Payn was always playful, but it is not for me to
cross-examine his stories, and others will lose rather
than gain by insisting on proof.

[245]

XVI

WILKIE COLLINS, SIR WALTER BESANT, AND
IAN MACLAREN

AAIN in memory I call at Gloucester Place to
see Wilkie Collins in his little house, a cheerful,
rotund, business-like man of a height dispro
portionate to his ample girth. Already advanced in
years, he had the briskness of middle age, and the fresh
ness of youth in his complexion. His luxuriant beard
was like spun silver, and had he worn a long mediaeval
cloak and peered out of it below its cowl, he would have
made the traditional Faust as that character appears
before Mephistopheles transforms him. Notwithstand
ing his matter-of-fact speech with its occasional cock-
neyisms of phrase and pronunciation; notwithstanding
his well-tailored and modern apparel, as modish as
that of any city man; there was a suggestion of the
pictorial necromancer about him, which grew as one
listened to him, and instead of the prints, of which
he was a connoisseur, against the walls, one almost
expected to find the apparatus of an alchemist.

He spoke of having visions and extraordinary dreams,
not with any apprehension of mental disorder, nor as
revealing anything abnormal, but without visible con
sciousness of the bewilderment he was producing in
the listener. I suppose that as he proceeded he must
have seen the question in my face, for as he turned to
show me a valuable print he had picked up at half a

[246]

COLLINS, BESANT, AND MACLAREN

crown in the neighbourhood of Leicester Square, and
described with excellent mimicry the transaction between
himself and the old woman who sold it, he offered me a
brief explanation, " Coffee. I drink too much of it."

He was writing for us a few stories based on circum
stantial evidence, and he frankly exhibited to me the
books of remarkable trials which he was using as material.
Let not any literary aspirant in the imitative age think
from this that he can do the same thing; that old trials
in sheepskin volumes will relieve him of the labour of
invention and imagination; that ready-made plots are
to be bought in Chancery Lane or the Strand at a few
shillings apiece. Stevenson's "sedulous ape" is a part
often played in the vanity of youth, but it leads to sad
eye-openings. Unskilled and inexperienced hands may
boil all the ingredients of an epicurean broth without
being able to extract from them the savour of the cook's
secret, incommunicable by formula. The trials are
accessible to all, but all attempts to transmute them, as
Wilkie Collins did, into little dramas enacted by human
beings in natural surroundings, are sure to be futile, and
the discouraged novice will learn that what seems
so easy depends after all on the possession and
exercise of that creative imagination which the books
do not supply.

I also met Sir Walter Besant occasionally; an ardent,
brisk, neat little man of fresh complexion, who puffed
and panted about the world at high pressure and with
wonderful vigour, spending himself, his money, and his
enthusiasm in the two causes which obsessed him — the
interests of the author as against those of the publisher,
and the Atlantic Union, that hospitable society which
he founded to bring about a better understanding and

[247]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

attachment between people of the mother-country and
those of the colonies and of America, not through politics
or printed propaganda, but through social and intellec
tual intercourse. The kindness of the English members
of that society to visitors coming without any personal
introduction is expressed in many ways. The dons of
Oxford and Cambridge give teas and show their antiq
uities and the sacred nooks of their colleges; bishops
and deans open the doors of their palaces and houses
and serve as vergers in exhibiting their abbeys and cathe
drals; the owners of historic mansions suspend their
rules and allow invasions of their memory-haunted
quietude, and the Royal Courts of Justice and the Houses
of Parliament grant special privileges. But far as
the hospitality goes, it stops short of the open-hearted,
open-handed intimacy and unreserve that Besant dreamed
of. Could he have had his way hotels and lodging
houses must have gone out of business. Each American
as he landed at Liverpool, Southampton, or Plymouth
would have been met at the foot of the gang-plank by an
English kinsman (related by marriage — Adam and
Eve — as Charles Mathews used to say), who would
at once invite him to his home to stay as long as he
pleased as a guest of honour and bosom friend. Dukes
and earls were not to be excluded as hosts from this (for
the American) fascinating project of entertainment, nor
were humbler people, like those of the law, the church
and his own profession to be considered unworthy minis-
trants in the stupendous and prolonged love-feast, which
would heal all old sores, expunge the slanders of American
history, and prove to the visitor that the Englishman,
despite preconceived and hostile opinions of him was,
after all, a pretty good sort of fellow.

[248]

COLLINS, BESANT, AND MACLAREN

Such was Besant's vision, and he talked of it with
a rising temperature and excitedly — talked by the hour,
talked till he glowed, talked till he was breathless, for
getting that both he and his listeners had other things to
think of and to do, and that instead of milk and honey
all the listeners could see was an iridescent mirage of
pools and palms where actually lay the inhospitable
desert of thirsty and shadeless sands.

Detached from the phantoms and deflated he came
to earth a bustling man, sure-footed and astute enough,
shrewd but strong in principle, exacting but fair and
aggressive in enthusiasms.

I must throw away a taking title for a play, a novel,
or a series of articles, in speaking of John Watson (Ian
Maclaren), the author of "The Bonnie Brier Bush,"
"Kate Carnegie," and other stories of Scottish life. I
would call him "The Man Who Looked Like Himself."
I believe that the people to whom it would apply are few,
and that those of ability, genius, and individuality differ
extraordinarily from what one infers of them. Let a
man be much above the average, and within as without,
he is inscrutable and inexplicable.

To this John Watson was an exception. He "looked
like himself." There could be no mistake about him.
His qualities were all visible in his person. I should
say that his predominant trait was a phenomenal trans
parency of character which was never afraid or ashamed
of itself.

As he appeared he was, one of the sanest and most
normal of men, essentially wholesome and reasonable,
utterly unaffected and without vagaries; neither subtle
nor eccentric, but of the kind whose conduct in any
given circumstances could be predicted to accord with

[249]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

the sober judgment of the wisest of his fellow men. I
do not imply by this complaisance of character or the
conscious or unconscious plasticity which, out of sheer
amiability or politic adjustability, follows the line of
least resistance. He could be angry, disputatious, and
stubborn — Highland blood was in his veins — but never
unfair, irrational, or bigoted. The impression he made
was of physical and intellectual equipoise; of a sound
constitution, carefully preserved, and of an outlook
that contemplated and measured spiritual perfection
in its relation to human limitations and deserts. Health
glowed in him; he was great at golf, great in stature,
clear-skinned and keen-eyed, a big, vigorous, rugged man,
with a plain, earnest face in which seriousness and
humour interplayed. His voice was rather strident,
and rose like the skirl of his native bag-pipes, but his
talk was fascinating; he made the listeners laugh without
laughing himself. In the quietest way he dramatized
any trifling incident that amused him.

Once, when I was lunching with him at his house in
Liverpool and he was preparing to resign from the Sef ton
Park Church, he speculated as to how he might be es
timated after his departure. In an instant the table
and those around it vanished, and we were listening to
two elders with whispering voices discussing a retiring
minister.

"A good man, a verra good man," one of them was
saying.

< "Ay, he was that. There'll be nobody to deny it.
But awm thinking — weel, no, I'll no say it."

"Awm thinking the same masel'. Was he no a bit
off in his sermons lately, did ye say?"

"Weel, perhaps."

[250]

COLLINS, BESANT, AND MACLAREN

"And no so keen as he used to be."

"Puirman!"

"Ay, he did his best, nae doot."

"Ye minded him in the Sabbath school? Strange,
verra strange hoo the attendance dropped. I canna
account for it. What'll you be thinking?"

"I've heard creeticism, ay, severe creeticism;no that I
agree with it, or disagree with it. Mackenzie was telling
me we'll be lucky to be rid of him, and Campbell that
he was ruining the kirk."

"Ay, and Ferguson was saying — but I'll no speak
ill of him."

"Puirman!"

" Awm thinking it's for the best he will be going."

"Maybe. The new man's fine — another John Knox,
Mackenzie was saying."

One could hear their undertones, as they damned with
faint praise and condemned by innuendo; one saw them
in their decent blacks, askance, timorous, insinuating.
I wish I could repeat the dialogue in the Scot's vernacular,
as Watson spoke it, with a humorous, familiar mastery
that Robert Louis Stevenson himself could not excel: no
other dialect is so vividly expressive, so irresistible in ap
peal. His features hardly moved, nor had he recourse
to gestures. He did not act the little scene, but seemed
to visualize it to us by hypnotic suggestion as he sat
there and conjured us into it.

In the same way he described a "heresy hunt" of
the kind that shakes Scotland to its foundations. He
described the stir it makes in the silence of the hills and
the recesses of moor and lochs. Every tongue in the
land is loosened by it; the taciturn break their habit
and become voluble. Two shepherds in adjoining pas-

[2511

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

tures who have been estranged for years in sullen enmity
draw together once more to argue it; and in less than a
fortnight the Duke of Argyll — not the present duke,
but his father — "is out with a pamphlet." The
late duke, a tireless controversialist, was always out with
pamphlets, and that detail in this case, as inevitable
as rain at all seasons and heatherbloom in autumn, was
indispensable to the picture, which no elaboration or ex
pansion could have made more complete.

Afterward, in his library, we talked of men, women,
books, and theatres. His views were generous, his
tastes catholic. Learned as he was in theology, he did
not despise the lighter pleasures and interests of the world.
He could enjoy a glass of wine, a big cigar, a new novel.

"I am not boasting or exaggerating," he said, "but
I can usually get all I want out of a novel in three hours.
I have been reading one, however, to which I have given
three weeks, and I am going to read it again. Guess
which it is."

I had been enchanted by Hewlett's "Richard Yea and
Nay," and offered it as a solution.

"Pretty close, but not it. It is 'The Queen's Quair',"
he replied, naming Hewlett's later story, which has Mary
Queen of Scots as the principal figure.

"I don't take as authentic Hewlett's interpretation of
her, but it is amazingly ingenious and daring, a satisfying
picture to the imagination, though not historically true."

Modest he was, and yet hypersensitive to any reflec
tion on the fidelity of his own drawing of Scottish charac
ter. I ventured to say that in my opinion his pictures
of life in Drumtochty were too idyllic, and that they
would have been stronger if he had not excluded the
grimmer strain which, without being as prevalent as

[2521

COLLINS, BESANT, AND MACLAREN

in "The House with the Green Shutters," does not hide
itself in the people themselves. He would not have it
so; he was out of his chair at once, storming me with
instances to the contrary. It was plain that he took
himself for a realist, he who in these amiable little stories
milked the cow of human kindness until it tottered.

When he was in New York on a preaching and lectur
ing tour, I invited him to luncheon at one of the gayest
uptown restaurants. I, and David A. Munro, who
had been a classmate of his at Edinburgh University,
called for him at the old Everett House, and he came down
stairs to go with us in a fancy tweed suit and a scarlet
scarf. I suppose there was not another man in the city
that day who looked so little like a cleric as he did.

We boarded a car and put him into the only vacant
seat, while we, case-hardened, hung by straps and bent
over him, laughing and talking. WTe were absorbed in
ourselves until the shrillest voice I ever heard said:
"If you want to lean on anybody, lean on your friend.
Ain't he big enough?" Unconscious of transgression,
we were shocked, and stared into one another's faces.
The voice was that of an untidy, waspish woman seated
next to Watson. "Did you speak to us?" I asked,
abashed.

It repeated the remonstrance even more sharply: "If
you want to lean on anybody, lean on your big friend
here."

I or Munro had unconsciously touched her chaste and
poignant knees. She sniffed at our profuse and humble
apologies, as we meekly straightened ourselves, and we
had not recovered from our shame and mortification when
she, arrived at her destination, flounced out of the car,
withering us with a final poisoned arrow from her eye.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Watson's face filled with amazement. "I couldn't
have believed it," he panted. "Why, I have always
supposed the Americans to be the politest people in the
world"; and over his cigar after luncheon he gave us
an instance to justify that opinion.

"As I was coming over in the Teutonic, I sat down
in the library one afternoon, when the ship was rolling
and pitching a good deal, to write some letters. Almost
immediately a diffident-looking young man dropped into
a chair by the desk, and fixed his eyes on me. An hour
or more passed, and he was still there, returning my
occasional and discouraging glances at him with a foolish,
ingratiating smile. I was inclined to be annoyed. I
had a suspicion that he was a reader of my books, perhaps
an admirer — God only knows why I have admirers
- or an autograph-hunter. He could wait. They are
always with us., like the poor. But at last he rose,
swept the air with the cap in his hand, and spoke:

' 'Excuse me, Doctor Watson; I'm real sorry to disturb
you, but I thought you'd like to know that just as soon
as you left her, Mrs. Watson fell down the companion,
way stairs, and I guess she hurt herself pretty badly.
The surgeon's with her now.'

"After I had found out that she was only a little
bruised, and had time to reflect on that young man's
conduct, it seemed so considerate, sympathetic, and
delicate, that I said to myself only an American could
have been capable of it. Never mind that drop of vin
egar. Americans are the politest people in the world."

His thoughts were not envisaged, and whether he was
quite in earnest or slyly sarcastic, the reader may decide
for himself. His face was enigmatical.

254

XVII
FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

WHEN I met him twenty-three years ago, Lord
Wolseley was the hero of the hour in England.
He had gathered laurels everywhere — in India,
the Crimea, China, and Egypt. Where others had failed
he had succeeded, and in the rapture of its appreciation
the public exalted him as "England's only general."
His promotion had been rapid. Three years after inter-
ing the army he had risen to be captain, and six years
after that lieutenant-colonel. In the first eight years of
his service he had been continuously in the field, always
at war, always at the front. A peerage had been con
ferred on him; the field-marshal's baton had become
more than a vision or a symbol of prophecy. Much had
he seen and suffered much, like Ulysses. His escapes had
been as miraculous as his victories had been brilliant.
Buttons had been shot off his coat and seams out of his
collar; bullets had knocked the cap off his head and grazed
his skull without fulfilling their mission. Not that he was
scathless. A deep, purplish furrow crossed his left cheek,
and close observation discovered an artificial substitute
for his right eye.

"Over and over again I ought to have been ended,
and perhaps I was indecent in refusing to die when
others in similar circumstances always did so," he
said.

As an evidence of what the British Army had been in

[255]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

his youth, he told me how his first engagement was fought
in Burma.

"I was at Rangoon at the time, and the news arrived
there of the rout of a company commanded by Captain
Lock. Every soldier who could be spared was to go up
the river, push through the jungle and punish his enemy.
Two hundred of the Eightieth Regiment went under
command of Sir John Cheape. We fought for nineteen
days, until at last we worked our way up to the final
position one afternoon and began making arrangements
for attacking the next morning. At daybreak, when the
fog cleared, I was sent with four men to a certain
point to skirmish. I had never been drilled! My four
men, or rather boys, had neither been drilled nor had
even fired off a musket!"

The boys were killed almost at once; Wolseley himself
pushed forward and fell into a pit dug by the enemy, and
just missed being impaled on a spike they had erected
in it. When he lifted himself out he was so dazed that he
crawled into the enemy's lines, and perceiving his mis
take, had to dash back under their fire. Again advanc
ing with a fresh support he saw his fellow officers drop
dead, and soon afterward he himself was shot through
the leg.

" Go on," he cried to the men who, were lingering over
him; "Go on!" and soon after that the enemy bolted.

His own unpreparedness and the inefficiency of the
young soldiers were not the only evidence of the almost
unbelievable incapacity of the war office and the admi
ralty of those days. He had sailed for China with part of
his regiment from Portsmouth in a notoriously unsea wor
thy troop-ship called the Transit, and she had got no far
ther than Hurst Castle in the Solent, almost within sight of

[2561

Copyrighted and photographed by Win. H. Rideing.

LORD WOLSELEY
At Fir Grove House, Farnham, Surrey, in 1888

FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

her port of departure, when heaving to for fog she sank
with the receding tide on her own anchor and made a
hole in her bottom. The pumps were started, but
the water gained, and the captain turned back for
Portsmouth.

Lord Wolseley grimaced as he told the story. "As
a precaution against dangerous explosions near the dock
yards, from time immemorial the positive rule at Ports
mouth has been that no ship shall enter the harbour until
she has discharged all her powder at Spithead into light
ers provided for that purpose. All that the Transit had
on board was already well under water, for the leak was
in the magazine. No danger from the mixture of powder
and water was therefore possible, but there was the order
signed by 'my lords' of the admiralty, and the captain
did not dare to infringe it.

"He could not anchor, for his steam pumps only worked
in connection with the engines which drove the screw,
so, if the ship stopped, the pumps would stop also, and
she would have sunk in a few minutes.

"I can never forget the absurdity of the position,"
he continued. "One of her majesty's ships, crowded
with soldiers and half -full of water, in a sinking condition,
steaming at full speed in a circle at Spithead, whilst
the naval authorities were striving to decipher the signals
of distress displayed at our mast-head. At last the sig
nals were made out by those on shore, and formal per
mission was given for us to enter the harbour.

"After a great deal of manoeuvring we came alongside
a dockyard pier. To it we were lashed with chains and
stout hawsers, to prevent the ship from moving, whilst
the screw turned at full speed, its movement being, as I
have said, a necessary accompaniment of the steam

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

pumps, whose action was necessary to keep the ship
afloat."

She was patched up, but while she was crossing the
Bay of Biscay she was obliged to put into Corunna for
more repairs. As often as the wind blew strong she
leaked again, and during a cyclone in the Indian Ocean
she threatened to founder. All hands, sailors and sol
diers, officers and men, were kept at the pumps for several
days with little sleep and less food. Then the weather
moderated, but her misfortunes were not ended. Steam
ing through the Strait of Banca to Singapore she struck
a spike of coral reef, and stayed there till she sank forever.
The crew and the troops were landed by the boats on
an adjacent island, and when they were rescued the
ships that brought relief also brought news of the out
break of the Indian Mutiny and orders to proceed to
Calcutta instead of China.

What happened to him there is a matter of history, a
thrilling chapter, written by others than himself. If
he refers to it at all his own part in it is disguised or
slighted, and his manner is that of a detached recorder of
the events described rather than that of a participant
in them. His evasions reminded me of another general,
who at a club I belong to was urged after dinner to tell
us how he won his Victoria Cross. He hummed and
hawed, backed and filled, meandered for an hour or more,
provoked our interest, hovered over the point, balked
at it, and furtively came back to it only to shirk it again.
"How'ver — how'ver. What does it matter? Ah -
er, I was shot through both arms.

"He, the beggar — how'ver, what does it matter?
What does it matter?" As he sat down he coughed and
blushed like a school girl, leaving the supreme moment of

[258]

FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

the adventure for our future discovery through other
sources.

Lord Wolseley does not hum and haw. There is no
embarrassment or trepidation in his manner; he is com
posed and perspicuous, but if he approached it he never
arrived at the revelation of his own exploits. Historical
he might be, but not autobiographical. All I drew out
of him about the relief of Lucknow was an incident that
occurred on the way there.

"About forty miles from Cawnpore is the station of
Futteepore. Upon reaching it we received orders from
General Havelock, in front, to halt there for the present.
This was, of course, very disheartening to men who had
marched, I may say night and day, to get to Cawnpore
in time to join the column there being collected for the
relief of Lucknow. The first thing we did upon reaching
Futteepore was to search for the remains of the gentleman
who had been commissioner of the district, and who had
been murdered there.

"He had been well known to all the natives in the re
gion as a good and just man, devoted to their interests
and to their welfare. He was religious, and had erected
on the main road a stone tablet with the Lord's Prayer
engraved on it in three languages.

"When the news of the mutiny at Cawnpore had
reached his station, all the Englishmen there but he had
gone back to Allahabad. He would not budge, as he
stoutly maintained the natives would not molest him.
He was wrong; they attacked him in his house, to the
flat top of which he retreated, and there he sold his life,
killing, as the natives told us, thirteen mutineers before
he ceased to breathe.

" We found his skull, and collected as many of his bones

[2591

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

as we could. The only coffin we could obtain was an
empty brandy case, in which we buried him with military
honours. The sole inscription upon the box that con
tained his bones was 'Old Cognac5."

The scar on Lord Wolseley's left cheek had to be ac
counted for. All he would say of it was "in the trenches
before Sevastopol," as he switched readily enough to less
personal incidents of that memorable campaign. He
visualized the scene: the bleak hills, gray under snow and
sleet and rain; the drenched and half -starved troops hid
ing from the Russian batteries ; the bursting of shells and
the whistling of rifle balls among them.

"I remember," he said, "some curious things. I was
sitting some few yards in the rear of our first parallel,
alongside Captain Stanton, who was giving me instruc
tions for the coming night. Two sergeants stood
together facing us, listening to the orders which I wrote
in my pocketbook. Whilst so occupied in what we con
ceived to be a very safe spot, down tumbled both the
sergeants in front of us, as a shell rushed past so close that
we felt its wind. One man's head had disappeared, and
the other's face was horribly mangled; what we supposed
to be his jawbone obtruded from a ghastly wound.

"The next morning I inquired in camp how the man
was, and learned he had not been touched by the shell,
but that his terrible wound had been made by the jaw
bone of the other sergeant, which was driven into his face.
Indeed, a little reflection ought to have told us that no
man could be seriously wounded in the head by the blow
of a shell and still live."

The hospital was full, and many a sick and wounded
man had to be turned back to the slush and mud of the
trenches for a bed. Wolseley himself was thrice

I [2601

FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

wounded, once dangerously. He and two sappers
were filling a breach when a round shot scattered the
loose stones with such force that while one of the men was
beheaded the other was disembowelled. Wolseley also
fell, smothered in blood. He was supposed to be dead,
and it was one of the wounds he received then that split
his cheek open and cost him an eye.

It was in 1888, when he was adjutant-general of the
army, that he asked me to spend a few days with him at
the country house he had taken at Farnham — that
pleasant little Surrey town where William Cobbett Was
born in the " Jolly Farmer," and where at Moor Park,
Swift, serving as secretary to Sir William Temple, became
entangled with Stella, and where the Bishop of Win
chester has his seat.

We went down from Waterloo on one of those June
days in which the English climate repents its sulks and
takes on the quality of Paradise under a sky of the purest
blue, holding Alps of fleecy, silvery, slow-moving clouds
which diffuse the light and soften the landscape till it
seems to be not of earth at all, but a heavenly mirage,
exquisitely intangible.

The carriage that met us at the station swept with us,
my wife and me, into the flowery and secluded grounds
of Fir Grove House. Lord WTolseley, with his wife and
daughter, were in another part of the garden, to which
we were led by the butler through one of those airy,
fragrant English sitting rooms, its tables laden with
flowers and its French windows reaching to the level of
the velvet lawn, and there we found him with one arm
linked in that of the elder lady, and the other in that of
the younger, vivaciously humming a tune and kicking
his heels with all the liveliness of my old friend Grossmith

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

in the part of the major-general in Gilbert and Sullivan 's
nonsensical play. I had caught him quite unawares
in the bosom of his family, and unhampered by the least
formality or consciousness of observation. A trying
situation, hazardous to dignity, upsetting to decorum,
it might have been, but instead of that it made our re
ception facile through our mutual appreciation of the
humour of it. Strangeness and the hesitating prelimina
ries of introduction were cancelled by the little surprise.
We were established by that first peal of laughter.

In Lady Wolseley we saw a very handsome woman
with a strong resemblance to the Empress Eugenie, and
a high-born manner of much sweetness and grace.
Frances, the only child, who will become a peeress in her
own right, was but a wholesome slip of a girl with a pas
sion for horsemanship and gardening, and since then she
has made gardening the vocation of her life. Lord
Wolseley himself was spruce, dapper, debonair; a man of
the world as well as a soldier; alert but composed; dressed
in the latest fashion — that morning in a gray lounge
suit and a Homburg hat; not unconventional, nor, on
the other hand, impeded by the inflexibilities of unreason
able usages or tradition; a man of various interests and
strong opinions, constant in friendship, and, one could
safely infer, resolute in opposition.

One could not have asked for a blither companion,
and he made our visit a round of delight. His knowl
edge of books and authors seemed encyclopaedic. When
he took us through Moor Park I was convinced that he
knew every word Swift had ever written, and every word
written about him.

Moor Park was the retreat of Sir William Temple when,
after the death of his son in 1686, he withdrew from pub-

FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

lie life. He died here in 1699; and near the east end of
his house is the sundial under which, according to his
own request, his heart was buried in a silver box, "in the
garden where he used to contemplate the works of nature
with his beloved sister, the Lady Giffard." There were,
however, other inmates of Moor Park, "to whom," writes
Macaulay, " a far higher interest belongs. An eccentric,
uncouth, disagreeable young Irishman, who had narrowly
escaped plucking at Dublin, attended Sir William as
amanuensis, for board and twenty pounds a year; dined
at the second table, wrote bad verse in praise of his em
ployer, and made love to a very pretty dark-eyed young
girl who waited on Lady Giffard. Little did Temple
imagine that the coarse exterior of his dependent con
cealed a genius equally suited to politics and to letters;
a genius destined to shake great kingdoms, to stir the
laughter and the rage of millions, and to leave to poster
ity memorials which can perish only with the English
language. Little did he think that the flirtations in his
servants' hall, which he perhaps scarcely deigned to
make the subject of a jest, was the beginning of a long,
unprosperous love, which was to be as widely famed as
the passion of Petrarch or of Abelard. Sir William's
secretary was Jonathan Swift; Lady Giffard's waiting
maid was poor Stella." .

With him (Lord Wolseley) literature was more tnan a
recreation, and every day, generous as he was with his
time, he shut himself for some hours in his library to ad
vance that standard "Life of John Churchill," the famous
Duke of Marlborough, upon which he was then engaged.
He was one of those enviable persons who can do almost
without sleep. You could part with him late at night,
yet find him up with the dawn before the rest of the

[ 263 ]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

household had stirred. One night he went to London to
dine with Lord Randolph Churchill, and as there was no
train to Farnham at the hour of his return, he chose to
alight at Aldershot, and to walk thence home, a distance
of twelve miles or more, long after midnight.

"Couldn't you have had a carriage?" Lady Wolseley
demanded in the morning.

'Yes, my dear, but I wanted the exercise."

"You might have met footpads," she protested.

"Lucky for them that I didn't," he laughed, throwing
himself into a sparring posture which gave assurance of
as good a defence as ever brought down the curtain
on a three-to-one encounter in a melodrama. Despite
the sapping of all those wounds of his, he at fifty-five
stood like a man whose vigour had never met with
drains.

He had suffered much during his career from the mal
administration of the war office, and once he exclaimed
impatiently: "Statesmen! They are vestrymen. One
good soldier is worth more than a score of the best of
them." He it was who, to his everlasting sorrow, and
through no fault of his own, failed to reach "Chinese"
Gordon in time to save him at Khartoum. Gordon
was a close friend of his, and had started on that last
expedition from Wolseley 's house in London. "Have
you any money in your pocket? " Wolseley asked at the
last moment, knowing well how in his exaltation Gordon
lost sight of trifles of that kind. He could not keep
money; it was no sooner in his hands than he gave it to
the first object of charity that claimed it. Gordon con
fessed that he had not thought of money, and Wolseley
raised among fellow officers a purse of several hundred
pounds for him. Gordon kept it till he reached Port

[264]

FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

Said, when a needy sheik to whom he was very much
attached wheedled it out of him.

Wolseley preserves the last two letters ever received
from Gordon, one saying, "Khartoum all right. Can
hold forever," and the other, "Khartoum all right.
14.12.84." He could not hide his emotion; his eyes glis
tened as he spoke of him.

Gorden was not the only one of whom he spoke with
enthusiasm. One day we had at luncheon Colonel
Maurice (now general), son of the great preacher in
voked by Tennyson in the familiar lines: "Come,
Maurice, come —

"Where, far from noise and smoke of town,
I watch the twilight falling brown

All round a careless order'd garden
Close to the ridge of a noble down.

"You'll have no scandal while you dine,
But honest talk and wholesome wine,

And only hear the magpie gossip,
Garrulous under a roof of pine."

A tall, slender, handsome man, suave and modest,
Colonel Maurice was so absorbed in relating what he had
seen at some recent naval manoeuvres that dish after
dish passed him untouched. 'You are not eating a
thing, Maurice," Wolseley anxiously protested, and then,
leaning over to me, he whispered, "Isn't he splendid?
And as brave as a lion!" Maurice, too, had been in the
trenches before Sevastopol.

There were many literary people among the guests,
but we missed Henry James, who was another of the
host's intimates.

His tenancy of Fir Grove House, at Farnnam, was
coming to an end. The queen had just made him Ranger

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

of Greenwich Park, a position which has privileges with
out any exhausting responsibilities. Ranger's Lodge
was built by Anne of Denmark, Queen of James I, and
enlarged by Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I.
Later on it became the residence of the Earl of Chester
field, who wrote those letters to his son which Johnson
said inculcated the manners of a dancing master and the
morals of a courtesan. Chesterfield himself was de
scribed as a wit among lords and a lord among wits.

"She's the dearest old lady, the queen!" exclaimed
Lord Wolseley, speaking of her majesty's gift. "She's
always thinking that a fellow 's hard up."

I suppose that in any modern appraisement he would
be put down as old-fashioned and undemocratic, not
withstanding his courtesy and affability to those he
meets. " When I wns a child," he said, "it was impressed
upon me that a long line of forefathers was something
to be proud of, and placed me under an obligation never to
be forgotten — that ancient lineage conferred great bene
fits upon one, and required one to be all the more
careful of one 's character and one 's mode of dealing with
others. This had a very strong influence on my thoughts
and aspirations. Born in Ireland, but of an English
family, I had an intense love of England and a desire to
serve her. That I should join the army was natural,
for that was the profession of my father, grandfather,
and forefathers for many generations. I always gloried
in being a soldier; the very hardships of a soldier's life
in the field had a charm for me; the thought of it fired
my blood. Another thing that underlay and influenced
all my early career was an intense belief in God — in
an active God who took the greatest interest in my wel
fare, and who would, I was sure, grant those things

[266]

FIELD MARSHAL LORD WOLSELEY

that were for my eternal good. I was taught to rely on
His mercy at all times. I do not take the accident of
birth nearly so seriously now; but, after all, a well-born
man is fortunate in having through his ancestors an in
centive to an honourable life."

Perhaps this record gives the illusion, through the tense
into which I have fallen, of one who has passed, but
Lord Wolseley, in his seventy-seventh year, is still alive.
I caught a glimpse of him not many months ago at Hamp
ton Court, where he occupies a wing of the palace, which,
facing the silver ribbon of the Thames, has in its rear the
Arcadian gardens with their matchless glades of chestnut,
beech, and linden. He came forth as jauntily as ever,
and Lady Wolseley, who was with him, unbent in figure,
animated in manner, made a picture of youth prolonged,
its beauty changed but still preserved.

[267]

XVIII
TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

I USED to see Archibald Forbes at the apartment
which, before his second marriage, he occupied
in Mandeville Mansions, Mandeville Place. He
was very voluble and very nai've; he poured out his ex
periences and his ideas with a boyish confidence.
It was not an irritating egotism by any means;
on the contrary, it made one a participant in the exhil
aration which the achievements recounted fully justified.
A man sometimes glorifies himself in secret and frets his
soul out in doing so; Forbes flung his chronicles out tri
umphantly, and much as you might wonder and admire,
he, like Ulysses, wondered and admired more. What if
he boasted, he who had done so much to boast about?
As we listened to him, interest pinned us to his story, and
it was only afterward in review, when we were cool and
at a distance, that we could cavil. His egotism was too
young and too compelling to make any effort to dissem
ble or stultify itself, and it acquired the charm of honesty,
and simplicity.

"Sit down! Sit down! You'll have a glass of sherry,
or port?"

TJie decanters and glasses were produced, and he helped
himself before he launched into his discourse, which so
enthralled him that he failed to remember he had not
helped the visitor until two hours later he showed him
to the door.

[268]

TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

He was a splendid fellow to look upon; martial in
bearing; spare of flesh, broad at the shoulders; narrow
in the hips; round-headed; clean-shaven, save for a
crisp moustache, and clear-eyed — a soldier in every
feature. Physically he would have been equal to the
part of Blackmore's John Ridd. But in the Mandeville
Mansion days he was broken in health from exposure and
over-exertion, though in one of the rooms he still kept
a variety of kits suitable and ready for any sudden call
to the field that might come to him.

I asked him what he thought were the essentials of
his profession.

"There is only one thing for a new man to do," said
he, "or for any man, and that is to go at once to the
front and to place himself where the danger is the greatest
and the fire is the hottest, and to help the wounded as
much as possible. It is wonderful how quickly the way
a correspondent has behaved is reported through the
army; and if he shows courage he is at once ingratiated
with the officers and men; while if he is timid and thinks
more of his carcass than his newspaper, he is despised
and every obstacle against getting news is put in his way."

Then I asked him as to his feeling, under fire. "I al
ways have a desire to make myself as small as possible,
and in order to keep my thoughts off the danger I write
my despatches in full on the field, not making mere notes
to be revised and elaborated afterward, but thinking out
the most appropriate words and putting them together
with as much literary finish as I am capable of. In a
retreat, especially, when you hear shells coming after you,
without seeing them, this desire to dwarf one's self or
to hide in any hole, increases."

As to his "narrowest escape" he wrote to me: "All

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

narrow escapes are sudden and abrupt, and have neither
frontispiece nor tail-piece. It is a spasm and over with
it for the time. On the Shipka Pass I was being shot at
without intermission for one whole day, it is true; but
when throughout that period could one put one's finger
on the actual moment of narrowest escape throughout a
day that was all narrowest escape and yet monotonous
for want of any relief? I have cited you the most telling
instances I can remember, of a close call lasting far longer
than a momentary period, and accompanied by full and
alert consciousness of every feature of the incident as it
developed, until unconsciousness supervened. "

His letters like his talk were succinct, and as a specimen
I give one in reference to an article I proposed to him
on "Lincoln as a Strategist."

1 Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, N. W., 22nd March, 1892.
DEAR MR. RIDEING:

Until within a few days ago, ever since my return from America, I have
been in bed. I was seriously ailing before I left home; the double voyage
quite broke me down, and my recovery has been very slow. I am writing
this letter, as I have done the enclosed article, half reclining in an arm-chair,
with a blotting pad instead of a rest.

I must put myself on your sense of the fitness of things, and beg of you to
give me the elbow room of a second article. It is a tough subject to treat
properly. It would be easy enough to cull from the rebellion records, speci
mens of Lincoln's strategic reasonings and recommendations to his generals
in the field. But those disconnected pieces would have no intelligibility
to the masses. Typical pieces of an illustrative character must be selected
"and their significance elucidated by an explanation of the situation which
at the time surrounded them, and of the alternatives resulting from dis
regard of them. In the article now sent I have taken four important strate
gic deliverances by Lincoln, all of which, had they been fulfilled, would
have produced great results. You will readily recognize that the postulate
of Lincoln having been a strategist, does not in the slightest degree lean on
the accomplishment or the reverse of his strategic conceptions. His strat
egy was not, it is true, theoretic; it was eminently practical indeed; but he

[270]

TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

in his position could not enforce its performance. Moltke through the tele
graph wire could do this from his desk in the general staff in Berlin, because
he was virtually the head of the army in his position as the chief of staff,
and the leaders in the field, away down among the Bohemian Mountains
had to obey him. But Lincoln was a civilian and his titular position as
commander-in-chief did not warrant him in issuing the professional soldier's
commands for specific action. All he could do was to write to them letters
of strategical advice.

I have about halved the field of his strategical manifestations in the accom
panying article. There is no strategy in his letters to McClellan in the
Peninsula, and a second article would deal with his strategic letters to Mc
Clellan, Burnside, Hooker, Meade, and Rosecranz subsequent to Antietam
and finishing on Grant's accession to the full command. No word of strat
egy did Lincoln ever write to Grant or to any of the men who fought under
Grant. Specimens of the letters of this period, from autumn 1862 to early
spring 1864, could easily be dealt with in articles of equal length with the
one I send you. You will readily understand that I am not asking for per
mission to write a second article because I am greedy for the honour arium.
But I have the writer's legitimate pride in making a good and creditably
finished job of a subject which I sincerely believe will be found of great
interest by American readers, and which also may add to my reputation, and
certainly to my acceptation among my American friends, who will like that
a foreign writer should have so familiarized himself with the history of their
great war, and has found a new laurel wherewith to deck the memory of
the great President.

I have written of McClellan as I honestly think of him. Certainly not
so strongly, by a great deal, as have Nicolay and Hay. Nevertheless I am
in your hands, and if you think that I have been too strong, you will find
that I have marked within pencil brackets a passage extending from last
line of page twenty to the tenth line of page twenty-one, which you can
excise if you think proper.

Assuming that you will accede to my anxious request for a second article,
it ought certainly to follow immediately on the first. I write more slowly
than I used to do, and the consultation of many references in an arm-chair
is very tedious. Therefore I ought to be at work on No. 2 as soon as may be.
If you agree that it is to be done I will ask you at early convenience to
squander a dollar on the following cable:

"Maclis, London.
Forbes. Yes."

That will reach me and start me.

Very sincerely yours,

ARCH'D FORBES.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Another letter refers to the importance of organization
in a war correspondent's campaign.

1 Clarence Terrace, Regent's Park, N. W., January 4, 1894.
DEAR MB. RIDEING:

As Millet* can tell you, the mere writing of war letters and war telegrams
is by no means the " be-all-and-end-all " of the war correspondent's work.
That is indeed a mere item. It is obvious that a man does not do much good,
however well and copiously he writes, if he has no means of getting his writ
ten or wired matter onto his editor's desk. The accomplishment of this,
by dint of a priori organization, by sedulous arrangement, by constant watch
fulness, and by frequent, severe, and prolonged personal exertion — that is
the real material and effective triumph of the war correspondent. And
it is of that species of mechanism, that careful planning, that assiduous fore
thought, that I propose to make the theme of the article which I shall have
pleasure in sending to you. You will find that the subject will not want for
adventure and interest. I consider that in the Russo-Turkish war I went
far to make something like a real science of the prompt forwarding of war cor
respondence.

Yours very truly,

ARCH'D FORBES.

All this had been impressed on him since his earliest
experiences as a correspondent in the Franco-German
war, when, utterly unprepared, he was commissioned by
the Morning Advertiser. That was both a pathetic and
an inspiring story. Folly and extravagance, he admitted,
had ingloriously ended his university career, and after
that he had taken the queen's shilling and enlisted in
the royal Dragoons, from which he had been discharged
when he started, with inadequate capital, the London
Scotsman, writing the whole of it, news, editorials, and
fiction, and taking on his own shoulders also the business
of publishing it without earning from it more than bread
and butter.

*F. D Millet, A. R. A. the versatile genius, who writes as well as he paints, and whose valour and
intelligence as a special correspondent in battlefields evoked the enthusiasm of Forbes.

[272]

TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

Then it was that James Grant, another Scot who ed
ited the Advertiser, despatched him without credentials
and with only twenty pounds in his pocket to see what
he could of the war. He chose the German camp, and by
a lucky chance received the "great headquarters pass,"
which gave him as many privileges as were allowed. He
could not afford horses, mounts and remounts, which
nearly all the other correspondents had. He covered
the ground afoot with a knapsack on his back; ate gypsy-
fashion under the lee of hedges and slept anywhere. He
had no money to send couriers back to the bases with his
despatches, or even for telegrams and no influence at
headquarters through which his letters could be hastened
to their destinations.

"I have often thought since," he said, "had all the
appliances been then at my command, such as in later
campaigns, I originated, elaborated, and strained many
a time to their utmost tension, how I might have made
the world ring in those early, eager, feverish days of the
first act of the Franco-German tragedy!"

Does that sound like braggadocia? It is a charac
teristic utterance, but it is not vainglorious. He did
"make the world ring" by his exploits whenever his hands
were untied.

Through no fault of his the despatches he sent by mail
were belated or lost en route to London, and a letter
from Grant recalling him was on its way to him, but not
received, when he was approached by the head of the
staff of the Times, William Howard Russell, with a pro
posal that he should transfer his services to that paper.

"It was with a pang that I was forced to tell him that
not even for such promotion could I desert the colours
under which I had taken service, futile in the way of

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

making a name for myself as I had come to realize that
service to be. "

Grant's letter of dismissal reached him, and he strug
gled back to London penniless, weary and disheartened.
Meanwhile, however, he had in his pockets unreported
news of great importance, which on his arrival he offered
to the Advertiser, feeling that he was in honour bound to
do so. Grant coldly and curtly refused it. Then he car
ried it to the Times, and sent a card by the door-keeper
to the editor, writing on it, "Left German front before
Paris three days ago, possessed of exclusive information
as to dispositions for beleaguerment. " He was not even
invited into the editor's office, and the only reply was a
message by the door-keeper that if he chose to submit an
article "in the usual way," it would be considered.

Humiliated and disappointed again, he took it to the
Daily News, and after a gruff reception by the acting
editor, was asked to expand it into three columns to be
paid for at the rate of five guineas a column — an enor
mous sum to him in those days of poverty.

"I wrote like a whirlwind then, and I found that the
faster I wrote the better I wrote," he said. "The pic
ture grew on the canvas. I had that glow and sense of
power which comes to a man when he knows that he is
doing good work. The space allowed to me would not
hold half my picture. I took it incomplete to the edi
tor — three columns written in three hours, and begged
him to give me more space."

The acting editor glanced at it and said, "Very good.
We'll take as much of this kind of stuff as you can write. "

"At five guineas a column?"

"Yes."

Forbes filled his pipe, and was happy.

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TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

Then the editor himself who had been absent on a
holiday came back, and Forbes told him of the offer his
associate had made. It was John Robinson (not then
knighted) to whom I have referred in my reminiscences
of James Payn. Robinson was of those who armour
themselves against impositions on their own kindness by
an affectation of severity. To Forbes 's amazement he
said, "I think not," and seemed to repudiate the ar
rangement for further contributions.

Forbes could not keep his temper and, having ex
pressed his opinion of the Daily News with the utmost
frankness, strode out of the door and downstairs. He
heard a call, " Come back! Come back!" but flung over
his shoulder a retort of three words, which had Robin
son heeded, it would, as he laughingly declared after
ward, have relieved that gentlemen of the necessity of
ordering coal for the rest of his days.

Robinson followed him and caught him before he had
turned the corner of Bouverie Street. "Come back,
man, and don't be a fool. I don't want articles written
in Fleet Street. I want you in the field — to start for
Metz to-night. "

And in the evening of that day Forbes, with unlimited
funds at his disposal, left Charing Cross as the accredited
correspondent of the News, to win for that paper and him
self a preeminence due to its liberality and that rare
combination in him which united valour, physical en
durance, military knowledge, and military prescience
with an extraordinary power of fluent and graphic liter
ary expression.

He was too opinionated and too outspoken not to
make some enemies, but none could impugn his loyalty
to his employers, his veracity, his executive abilities,

[275]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

or that phenomenal steadiness of nerve which enabled
him, while ankle-deep in blood and enveloped in smoke
and splashing fire, to describe a battle as imperturbably
and as smoothly as though it had been a garden party.
Sometimes when the battle was done and the combatants
recovering, he, fatigued as the rest, but oblivious of
himself, was in the saddle dashing toward the nearest
outlet, telegraphic, or postal, for his despatches. Little
wonder that while still in middle life he broke down, a
sacrifice to his own exacting and dauntless sense of
duty.

How unlike him, except in courage, was "Billy Russell,"
or as he was more properly known to the public in his
later days, Sir William Howard Russell, the friend of half
or more than half of all the monarchs, diplomats, and
warriors of the world !

Russell was an elegant little man, who in his later days
seemed to me like a modern Major Pendennis, so fault
lessly fashionable was he, so socially circumspect, so
assured of his footing in high places, and, without hau
teur, so conscious of his class. Something of a beau and
something of a dandy, he had the appearance and man
ner of an old-fashioned courtier: the easy grace and bland-
ness, the complaisance and the ductility of a more
formal and grandiose age than this. An Irishman, given
a chance, usually has the makings of a courtier in him,
and beyond his natural qualifications of that sort Russell
had the most engaging traits of his nationality outside
of politics.

One could not have asked for a livelier companion.
He had met everybody and been everywhere, serving
the Times in nearly every campaign from Lucknow, at
the time of the siege, till Egypt in 1883 — the Danish

[2761

TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

war with Schleswig-Holstein, the Indian mutiny, the
American Civil war and the Franco-German war.

His exploits were not as daring or as spectacular as
those of Forbes, but his personality and reputation,
together with the prestige of the Times, procured such
opportunities and privileges for him as no other cor
respondent ever had. Although he was bitterly criticized
afterward, the United States received him as something
more than an ambassador: the statesmen at Wash
ington and the commanders afloat and ashore made
a sort of bosom friend of him and admitted him to their
inmost secrets. I believe that of his varied experiences
those of the Civil war interested him most, and when I
was at the Garrick Club or his apartment in Victoria
Street with him, other subjects were postponed to make
room for his recollections of those stormy days.

He was actually present at meetings of President Lin
coln and his cabinet, and was besought as to the attitude
of England and international law when Lord Lyons,
then the British minister to the United States, was not
consulted.

And when he passed from the North to the South,
Jefferson Davis and his adherents received him with no
less friendliness and no less confidence. They were sure
that England would be on their side, and they talked to
him as if, instead of the representative of a neVspaper,
he had been England personified. His position became
trying and even perilous to his honour, from the extent
of the information given to him by both sides as to de
fences and plans, and it took all his presence of mind and
sagacity to avoid under eager and constant questioning
the betrayal of one camp to the other, which the slight
est indiscretion would have led to.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

Then came the route of the Northern forces at Bull
Run, the ignominious features of which defeat he
described so fully and so unsparingly in his letters that
he barely escaped from mob violence. The government
revoked his privileges, and, his occupation gone, he was
obliged to return discredited to England. For many
years afterward the name of "Bull Run Russell," used
as a synonym of renegade and miscreant, was men
tioned in the North only -with derision and execration,
but before his death, revisiting America, he found among
other changes that history had adjusted its perspective
of events and that time with softened judgment had
included him in its amnesty.

He always had a high and warm regard for Irwin
McDowell, the much-maligned general commanding
the Federal army at Bull Run, and after the close of the
war he met him by chance in Vienna.

"Strange, we should meet to-day, Russell."

"Why?"

"The anniversary of Bull Run. Had I won that
battle I would have been one of the most popular men in
the United States and you another. It's very much the
other way with us now. "

Russell told him that he still had a photograph of him
at home. "And I suppose," said McDowell, "your
friends ask who on earth is McDowell?"

Russell always had relays of friends at the Garrick
and was often there. In his early days he had been the
intimate of Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, Reade, and
Shirley Brooks. Thackeray provided him with letters
to all his friends in America, including the fascinat
ing "Sam" Ward, the wit and epicure of New York,
whose name sprinkles the pages of the memoirs of his

[278]

TWO FAMOUS WAR CORRESPONDENTS

contemporaries, native and foreign, and survives in the
various delicious and incomparable drinks and dishes he
invented which are placed before every visitor to that
hospitable city.

The last time I saw him was at the Garrick. His
gout tortured him, and he was worried about money
matters. He had just discovered that a once trusted
and confidential employe on the staff of the Army and
Navy Journal, which he owned and edited, had been
robbing him for many years, and he feared that his old
age would be passed in comparative poverty. His
friends came to the rescue, however, and his financial
difficulties were overcome.

279]

XIX

LADY ST. HELIER AND THOMAS HARDY

FORTUNATE were those who, visiting London,
took with them a letter of introduction to Lady
Jeune, who on her husband's elevation to the
peerage became Lady St. Helier. The daughter of an
ancient but impoverished Highland family, she had been
brought up like a Spartan child in austerity and sim
plicity, with little foretaste or foresight of the ascendency
which she was to achieve as much through her person
ality and natural gifts as through her aristocratic con
nections. She more than anybody else fused and
liberalized London society, leading it out of the ruts of
rank and class into a fellowship with art and letters, and
surprising both elements by the results of her tact and
magnetism. An introduction to her became a passport
to many social privileges.

May I attempt a picture of her? — A girl in figure,
simply dressed, and fresh as her own heather, with large
and beautiful eyes, which might be likened to one of her
native lochs in their changing moods, now full, cool, and
placid, as in calm and shadow, then as a loch swept by
wind and sun, luminous, shimmering and dancing with,
in her case, a sort of mischievous and communicative
humour. She brought dissimilar elements together, and,
as by magic, turned them into affinities. Under her spell
the shyest put off their reserve, and the lofty their
aloofness. Nor was she merely a mistress of social arts.

[2801 •

LADY ST. HELIER AND THOMAS HARDY

It was her privilege to be admitted to conferences of
the leaders of public opinion at which no other women
were present. Her intellectual and politicial influence
was as great as the charm which made her salon so
brilliant.

One day she invited me to her house to lunch with the
Princess Christian, King Edward's sister, who had
become interested in a periodical with which I was con
nected. The house is closed except to those bidden to
it, when royalty is present. The butler is careful to
ask you at the door if you are "expected," and he must
be sure that you are before he admits you. That is the
rule. We were only four, the princess, Lady St. Helier,
my wife, and I, and my apprehension of solemnity and con
straint, excusable in strangers on presentation to so il
lustrious a personage (one need not discredit one's self in
the least in confessing it), did not last beyond the crossing
of the threshold. The princess was not at all distant or
difficult in manner or conversation, but gracefully easy,
and fluent, an example I should say of the ordinary
Englishwoman of education, intelligence, good sense,
and good taste. If she differed from that not always
genial standard at all, it was in her utter freedom from
hauteur or condescension. No one could have been
simpler or less reserved, no one more inquiring, attentive,
considerate, appealing. She talked chiefly of politics.
The country was in the throes of a general election, and
she balanced the probabilities and ingeniously reasoned
them from a remarkable fulness of information. From
time to time we could hear a newsboy passing in the street
and piping his "extras," and in the middle of a dis
cussion she excused herself and told the butler to get a
copy for her. She buried herself in the sheet for a

[281]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

moment, and shaking her head, turned to me — I infer
that a Radical victory was recorded — asking with
naive apprehension in her eye, "Do you think the throne
is in any danger?"

What could one reply to that? Even a deep-dyed
Radical himself must have reassured her and declared
that any throne of which she was one of the ornaments
could not possibly be in any peril.

There, too, one met among scores of other brilliant
women, Mrs. Cragie - "John Oliver Hobbs" — the
American girl, an exquisite creature who for many sea
sons provided London with much of its wit. Her books
may perish, but not her epigrams. Many of them
are current, and already the people who quote them can
not remember their source and assign them to Sheridan,
Disraeli, or Oscar Wilde. What could have been happier
than the duchess, who divided the world into three
classes, "Dears, poor dears, and persons?" or this:
"There is no such thing as everybody — that is a news
paper vulgarism. One is either a somebody or a no
body — irrespective of rank or profession. The next
best thing to a somebody is a nobody in a good set."
There were so many of them that choice is embarrassed.
She herself had no poor opinion of them. Whenever
she was reminded of them she could laugh at them as
though she had never heard them before.

One night she took me to see her comedy, "The Ambas
sadors " at St. James Theatre. She had surely seen it
many times before, for the end of the run was at hand,
and stale as it may have become to others it had not lost
its freshness for her. It was like being with a delighted
child at a play. Each sally, each slant of wit, pleased
her as much as it did the audience, and her eyes sparkled

[282]

Photograph by the American Presi Association.

THOMAS HARDY

LADY ST. HELDER AND THOMAS HARDY

into mine for the confirmation of merit, which would
have been spontaneous even without her fascinating
presence.

She was fascinating in many ways, girlish in spirit and
in appearance; very slender, very dainty, very smart,
and gowned like a princess. People fell in love with
her and artists beseeched her to sit for them. There
are several pictures of her in pastel, oil, and crayon, but
to me she seemed to be one of those who in portraiture
call for and justify the delicacy of the miniature. She
had more than beauty and vivacity, however, and while
we yielded to those we became aware of a character as
ambitious and dauntless as a man's. Not a bit of a
blue-stocking, externally a woman of the world of fashion,
she was, with all her gayety and facility, a scholar, and
as happy and competent in conversation with solemn in
tellectuals and seniors as with simpler people.

I remember a lovely Sunday in the Isle of Wight,
where her father had a house to which she ran down
from time to time during the season, especially for those
charming English week-ends. In that house, as in her
town house in Lancaster Gate, she was always sur
rounded by clever people. To keep an appointment
in town she started back to London on the Sunday
evening, radiant, and, so far as eye could see, in perfect
health. The next morning, as I sat in the sunny garden
on a ledge between the violet sea and the rim of the cliffs,
a crying woman creeping toward me shocked me with
the news that when called an hour or so earlier Pearl
Cragie had been found dead in bed at Lancaster Gate,
with peace in her face, and a crucifix clasped to her bosom.

It was also through Lady Jeune that I became ac
quainted with Sir Henry Thompson, the physician of

[283],

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

kings, and, in the way of avocation, a painter of very
good pictures, which hung in the Royal Academy. He
was a small, courtly, handsome man, with face so infan
tile in its purity of complexion, that the frame of gray
hair made it almost abnormal. A rigorous dietician,
he habitually carried gluten and other ingredients of
health food with him wherever he went. His books,
which have a wide circulation, explain his theories, but
the theories were only for those who wanted them.
The dinners he gave — they contributed hardly less to
his celebrity than his pictures and professional
skill — were epicurean. He called them "octaves"
from the fixed number of the people who sat down
to them, never more or less than eight, and they
included nearly everybody of distinction in literature,
science, art, and politics during nearly forty years.
They began with Dickens, Browning, and Thackeray
among the guests; King Edward as Prince of Wales
came to four, and they were all given in the same
room with the same table and chairs during the
entire series. At that to which I was bidden,
Joseph Chamberlain and Thomas Hardy were
present and placed next to each other, and I won
dered what topic two men so dissimilar could find for
conversation.

The most astute of politicians, with little concern for
literature and a merely casual knowledge of it, on one
hand, and on the other hand the shyest of authors to
whom politics were remote and uninspiring: They
seemed to get along very well, and when an opportunity
came I asked Hardy what they had talked about. Had
Chamberlain confided the secrets of the cabinet to him,
or had Hardy, breaking his habit of reserve, disclosed

[284]

LADY ST. HELIER AND THOMAS HARDY

to the rather saturnine wearer of the orchid and the
monocle, the evolution of another Tess or Jude?

Hardy smiled: "We did talk, didn't we? It was
all about — what do you suppose? Genealogy. The
genealogy of the Endicotts of Dorset, who are the ances
tors of Mrs. Chamberlain, who was an Endicott of
Salem, Massachusetts."

I had a suspicion that he, as well as I, had expected
to be engaged by a greater interest than that, but
Mr. Chamberlain was usually pragmatic, and never
revealed if he had it, the charm of social adaptivity
and plasticity.

When Hardy came to town from Wessex he often made
Lady Jeune's his home, and the fewer the company
the more at ease he became. Low-voiced, abstracted
and ever self-effacing, he might have been taken for a
mild, timid, and unsophisticated cleric; he was the last
person one would have hit on in a crowd as the author
of those novels which take possession of us and make
us as intimate with their scenes and characters as his
Marty South was with the boughs which, brushing her
face in the dark lane, were recognized by her at once,
each variety of invisible shrub and tree recording itself
with a human touch through her intuition and long
experience.

We went to see him at Dorchester one day, and varied
the journey by coaching from Wool across the heath
which he calls Egdon and which on the map is Bere.
Down there time has little changed the face of the land,
or the character of the people. As they were a century
and more ago they are essentially now. Wool is the end
of the branch line, and across the fields from the station
is the gray old manor-house, where Tess and Angel Clare

' L2851

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

ate supper on their wedding night. The empty stone
coffin in which Tess reposed remains in the precincts
of the ruined abbey. The neighbourhood reverberates
traditions of the historical D'Urbervilles, from whom
she descended, and the little church of Bere Regis (Kings
Bere in the novel), with its grotesquely carved and
painted roof, has many memorials of their ancient splen
dour. Hither came Bathsheba, of "Far from the Mad
ding Crowd," to the fair, and within a league is Weather-
bury Castle, the scene of Swithin St. Cleeve's distraction
between love and the pursuit of astronomy. The awe
of the heavens was never communicated with greater
awe than in that novel - "Two on a Tower" — which
unexpurgated, made its first appearance in the Atlantic
Monthly. Thomas Bailey Aldrich was then the editor
of that periodical, and I remember how he halted over
the daring of the story. "I asked Hardy for a family
story, and he has given me a story in the family way,"
he complained to me with a sigh that could have
lifted a sea.

Then we came to other scenes of "Far From the
Madding Crowd," and saw Gabriel Oak shepherding his
lambs, and the covert where Sergeant Troy met Fanny
Robin. Egdon is wild and sombre under its coat of
wind-swept, ruffled gorse and heather, "an untamable
Israelish king," as Hardy calls it, but it is less spacious
and less austere to those who come freshly to it than it
is in his description. I know of savager and bleaker
moorland within thirty miles of Charing Cross.

Dorchester is the Casterbridge of the novels, a sleepy,
unchanging place, where Roman wrecks overlay the
still existing ruins of the aboriginals. A great amphi
theatre is one sign of its antiquity, and not far from the

T2861

LADY ST. HELIER AND THOMAS HARDY

long high street, upon which so many of his creations
have passed, we found the modest villa of brick and
terra-cotta which he designed and built for himself after
leaving Wimborne. Sentimentally, we might prefer
and expect to see him in a moated grange, but his own
choice was utilitarian, and he points with more pride to
the true workmanship of carpenters, masons, and plumb
ers than to ornament. Relics of the Romans turn up
as often as his garden is spaded, and where Caesar's
legions dwelt he abides in the spirit of Gray's * Elegy, "
and breathes the soothing air untempted by the turmoil
of the town.

He warms up in congenial society, but his humour is
like a thread of silver in a sombre tapestry. The im
pression he makes is that he is one of those who, in John
Burroughs's haunting phrase, are "Unhoused from
their comfortable anthropomorphic creeds and beginning
to feel the cosmic chill." I took away with me from
conversation at a dinner he gave me at theSavile Club
the idea of a doomed universe with its population suc
cumbing to the apathy of progressive and sterilizing
melancholia.

Richard Whiteing of "No. 5 John Street" and Sir Wil
liam Robertson Nicholl, theologian, essayist, and editor,
were with us that day. Whiteing is a big, dark, tender,
earnest man, whose success in fiction came to him, as
to De Morgan, in middle life and after exhausting years
of hard work in journalism. Nicholl is a wee Scotchman
with a dreamy manner and a voice that seldom rises
above a whisper. The manner cloaks a prodigy of
versatility and industry. He is a preacher, a lecturer,
a leader of the non-conformists, a voluminous author
and the editor of I don't know how many dissimilar

[287]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

periodicals, including the learned Expositor and the pop
ular British Weekly. That night he was going home, late
as our return was, to begin and finish before retiring, a
new introduction to the works of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
He brims with the quick, insinuating humour of his
race. A newly created knight was also with us, and
Nicholl, then unknighted himself, mischievously chaffed
him on his promotion.

"Do you make them crawl?" he said in a way that
pictured the obsequious bending the knee and dragging
themselves across the floor. "If I were a knight I should
make them crawl, aye, and though they begged I wouldn't
speak to any of them for full six weeks."

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

DOES the reader wish to see more celebrities, or
to meet again those he has seen before? Let
him go to the Lucys, a, name that is spoken in
London as though there were but two families of that
name in the Kingdom, the Lucys of Charlecote, the scene
of Shakespeare's poaching, and the Lucys of Ashley
Gardens. The latter are the ones I refer to.

Most people are in one way or another, and often in
many ways, like other people. Harry Lucy is like no
body else, except that in appearance he may recall
Dickens's Tommy Traddles. He is one of the smallest
of men, rubicund of complexion and crowned with a
mop of tumultuous hair, white, surging and uncurbed
as the crest of the sea, which knows no other combing
than an occasional abstracted or distracted sweep of the
fingers. He is an individual as rare and original as Mark
Twain, of a pattern that nature in a fastidious mood
evidently decided not to repeat, another instance of
Byron's lines:

Nature formed but one such man
And broke the die in moulding Sheridan —

a variation of another line by Ariosto.

His humour is of the twinkling kind, like Aldrich's,
and like that poet's, too, it is always catching you unpre-

[289]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

pared. It is like a restless winged thing, a little tor
menting but quite stingless. It comes at you round the
corner, and if it disappears for a moment it returns
and pricks you till you laugh in perceiving that nearly
everything may be assuaged and righted by it. It
has been Punch's best asset for many years, and I
believe that the public men of England prefer a line
or two of its amiable banter in the columns of that
sheet, so far as mention of themselves go, to a whole
column of editorial praise in the Times, or in any
other paper.

However wearisome and splenetic the sittings of Par
liament may be, his "essence" of the proceedings always
discovers some savirig an.d reconciling grace which heals
animosities and revives patience, and without the " Mem
ber for Sark" (his imaginary constituency) , the House of
Commons would be as little like itself as it would be with
out the Speaker himself or the mace on the table. Prob
ably no one else has so complete a knowledge of its
procedure, usages, and traditions, and probably no one
else is to the same extent persona grata with all the indi
viduals of all parties and all the factions as "Toby,
M. P.," "Harry," or, to give him his proper name and
new title, Sir Henry W. Lucy.

A charming little lady is mated to him: a lady of
infinite tact and friendliness, who is never apart from
him and who participates in all he does, both work and
play. When they are at sea she smilingly describes her
self to her friends as "marine secretary," when in the
country as "rural secretary."

They are much at home and constantly entertaining,
yet you find them everywhere in society — at Marl-
borough House, at Windsor, when the King gives a

[290]

SIB HENRY W. LUCY

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

garden party, at state balls, at every new play, at all
the functions of the season. I am proud to have had
them as friends for nearly thirty years.

For a time Lucy was editor-in-chief of the Daily News
and used to gather at his table some of his colleagues,
including Andrew Lang and Richard Whiteing. Lang
ate, drank, and talked, never missing the thread of con
versation, and wrote his article for the morrow's paper
while the dinner progressed. The article was always
a good one, moreover, and we, accustomed as we were to
journalistic facility, looked upon the achievement as upon
some feat by a magician which we could not explain.
He never lets it be seen that he takes anything seriously.
The world is a world of trifles for him, agreeable trifles
or disagreeable trifles. Nothing is worth while except
fishing or golf — London and all that goes on there
a waste of time, to be laughed at or scorned. His at
titude is one of mockery and disdain, not bitter but play
ful, and he makes a joke of even his own scholarship,
and occasionally of the scholarship of others. Pooh!
Pooh! Qui bono? Rubbish and rot! You listen to
him wondering to what extent he is dissembling, and while
you are pondering it your ears catch bits of slang like
splashes of mud on fresh marble, and some one you hold
in awe is spoken of as a "good-natured duffer" or as a
"bloke." Then his speech returns to respectability
without solemnity, and flows along in the pleasant
way like a clear and sparkling river, now deep, now
rippling in the shallows. Suddenly he pauses in the mid
dle of a sentence, and astonishes you further by dropping
his tall, loose, serpentine figure upon the floor to fondle
the poodle or the cat, and stretched there continues the
conversation from a position which, though it may sur-

[291]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

prise the others, evokes no apology or remark from
him.

Nothing matters with him. He becomes almost
petulant if anything is spoken of as being difficult or
imposing. "But why?" he repeats, and makes light
of it.

He reminded me of a story which Gilbert Parker
tells of Beerbohm Tree. When Tree was touring
America in Parker's "Seats of the Mighty," the author
took the actor to see Niagara Falls, and so arranged it
that the first view should be as impressive as possible.
He watched closely and eagerly, expecting an outburst
of awe and rapture over the sublimity of the spectacle,
and he was dumfounded when no emotion whatever
appeared in Tree's face.

"Well? "said Parker.

"Well," said Tree, "is that all?"

"Is that all?" frequently says Mr. Lang when others
are holding their breaths over something very unusual,
either admirable or in some way startling. I came from
the country one night to dine with him at his house in
Marloes Road, Kensington, and when he found that I
had turned my back on the peace and beauty of Box Hill
for that purpose, he upbraided me for what he probably
thought was the height of folly. Nevertheless, sitting be
tween him and Edmund Gosse (they are very intimate
and sympathetic) I had my reward in the interplay of wit,
as full of sparkle and exhilaration as the wine. The
scope of his knowledge is extraordinary, and he has the
same facility that Sir Edwin Arnold had.

I was talking with Arnold one day as to subjects on
which he might write for the North American Review.

"I am ashamed to say it, but I must," he sighed. "I

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

have been in journalism so long that I can write on any
subject, " with strong emphasis on the "any. "

It was true. I gave him many subjects during my
acquaintance with him, and he never failed, various
and dissimilar as they were, to develop them into just
the kind of article both editor and reader are eager for.
He could not be dull. He had the true journalistic in
stinct and capacity for lucidity, colour, animation and
condensation -- the art (or perhaps some may choose
to call it the trick) of sufficiency without redundancy,
and the projection of the essential and most significant
parts of his material over the abstract and recondite.
Necessity swung the whip. He who had written "The
Light of Asia" could not have submitted to the toil of
the "handyman" of the press without some distaste
and some sense of misapplication and waste. Not even
at the last did fatigue appear in his work, but while it
was carefully hidden there it was pathetically visible in
him. Blindness cast its darkness upon him, and a son
betrayed him and defaulted, yet up to the last, cheery
and courtly as ever, his pretty and devoted little Japanese
wife at his elbow, he dictated what he could not write
without revealing the creeping shadow of his afflictions.

Lord chancellors and lord chief justices also came to
the Lucys,' and I met Lord Russell of Killowen there as
well as at his own house near the Jeunes' in Harley Street.
He was quite unlike what one would have supposed him
to be from his reputation at the bar. Though an Irish
man, and the first Catholic lord chief justice, he looked
like an English squire, and not a trace of the brogue
lingered in his speech. A commanding figure, with a
noble and mobile, clean-shaven face, and a clear, rosy
complexion, he had a rural freshness about him, and when

f 293 1

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

he talked his interest in agriculture and sport confirmed
the inference which assigned him to a place in the country.
Ascot and the Derby, the chances of the horses and the
betting on them, topics of that sort would quickly draw
him out and lead him into stories of the efforts he had
made and the sacrifices he had endured that he might
be present at some race meeting at Chester, Newmarket,
or Epsom. He would confide to you, if you showed the
right sort of understanding and appreciation, how once
he nearly owned a Derby winner and while he took a
pinch from his snuff-box and you recovered your breath,
he would look the words as plainly as if he had spoken
them, "What do you say to that?" Then the theatre
and plays: he was fond of them, but old-fashioned in his
preferences. He knew and admired Irving, but had said
to him, "You know, Irving, I like those things you used
to do two hundred years ago much better than those you
are doing now. "

Yes, observing him without knowing him, a stranger
could not have been blamed for want of perspicuity if
he had assumed from glimpses of him in such moods that
he was a conservative and benevolent but rather "sporty"
country gentleman of more than average intelligence
and education. That he, this apparently bland and in
genuous person, could be the lord chief justice of England,
who as Charles Russell (later Sir Charles) had been the
terror of those he opposed and who in the cases of Mrs.
Maybrick and Charles Stewart Parnell, not to mention
scores of others, had impressed the whole world by his
skill in the most ingenious and relentless cross-exami
nation which the stubbornest of falsehood and guilt
quailed under and at last confessed to, was more than
perplexing.

[294]

From a photograph by C. Vandyk, London
SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

I am speaking of him in his later years, when his age
and his elevation to the lord chief justiceship had, of
course, imposed more restraints upon him than were
necessary in the combative advocate. As lord chief
justice he bore himself with all the decorum and im
partiality the office calls for; perhaps his composure cost
him some effort, for he was naturally vehement, impatient,
and more or less overbearing. Mellowed by age and un
provoked, however, he became on the surface at least
almost benignant, and the volcanic explosions that had
burst from him as a barrister were heard from him no
more. Anybody would have thought him a philan
thropic and confiding old gentleman, whose faith in
human nature had never been disturbed. That was the
impression he made on those who at the first glance did
not identify him in the relaxation of social intercourse,
though a fuller acquaintance was sure to reveal by and
by something in his eye, a sort of probe or X-ray, which
penetrated the object on which it was focussed with a
perhaps startling comprehension of an unavailing reti
cence. He himself revealed nothing of the effect on
him of what he discovered, nor connoted it except
by another pinch of snuff. After all, the old Charles
Russell was only sheathed and subordinated in the
graver and more responsible lord chief justice, and he
no doubt "spoke in silence" to himself with his old
impatience of fraud, humbug, and hypocrisy. Strong
men change less than weaker ones, and concealed but not
abandoned were his old weapons of inquisition, analysis
and denunciation.

In his early days at the bar his temper sometimes got
the better of him, and on a memorable occasion he brought
down on his head a rebuke from the court, presided over

[295]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

by Justice Denman, who said that before the next day
he would consider what he ought to do. On the follow
ing morning both bench and bar were in a state of ex
cited anticipation, and Justice Denman, entering the
court with more than ordinary solemnity, began the busi
ness of the day by saying, " Mr. Russell, in my condition
of sorrow and resentment yesterday I could not trust
myself to take the action which seemed imperative, but
since the court adjourned last evening I have had the
advantage of considering with my brother Judge the

painful incident, and I ' Russell was instantly on his

feet, and spreading his outstretched arms with an air
of superb magnanimity and pacificatory desire, said:
'Yes, my lord, and I beg that you will not say another
word upon the subject, for I can honestly assure you that
I have entirely and forever dismissed it from my memory "
— a turning of the tables which evoked such a roar of
laughter in the court that even Mr. Justice Denman and
his associate had to join in it.

One night when I was dining with him at Harley Street,
a girl from Cincinnati was among the guests, and for some
reason or other not apparent she was very ill at ease.
Perhaps it was the importance of the lord chief justice
that agitated her, though it is not usual for an American
girl to be flustered by the eminence of the people she
meets. She, the ordinary girl, will air her ideas of science
to a Tyndall, her philosophy to a Spencer, her poetry
to a Tennyson or her political knowledge to a Glad
stone without any consciousness of fatuity or impudence.
When others sit and listen she, unabashed, will offer her
own opinions with the assurace of an equal and with a
staggering lack of diffidence. The girl from Cincinnati
was not of that kind, however. She was more like, one

[2961

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

of those English girls who are fast disappearing in the
manumission of the sex in this age of the suffragette —
those demure, tremulous, self-effacing creatures who
blush when spoken to and whose only comment on what
ever my be said to them is "Fancy!" The Cincinnati
girl got little further than monosyllables, and stammered
over even them. When Lord Russell himself spoke to her
she sank as if on the verge of collapse. His manner was
gentleness itself and his handsome face smiled. He spoke
of his fondness for America and of New York, which he
knew well.

"Yes, : she said laboriously. "New York is —
fine."

"I think Fifth Avenue is the most magnificent thor
oughfare in the world. "

"Yes. The gardens round the houses are so beautiful,
aren't they?"

It was ill-bred of me and unkind, I confess, but I
could not contain myself. "Gardens round the houses
in Fifth Avenue!" I exclaimed.

The hopeless look she gave me shamed me. His face
did not show surprise; it was one of those faces that
rarely mirror what is passing in the mind. After a
moment's hesitation and beaming encouragement he
replied: "The gardens in Fifth Avenue? Ah, yes, to be
sure. I had almost forgotten the gardens. " He pitied
and ameliorated her plight as soon as he saw it. I as
sumed that she knew the street well enough, but that she
was in such a nervous confusion, so like a person drown
ing, that her knowledge lapsed into illusion and her tongue
wagged away from whatever intelligence she may have
had when she was not distraught.

Could this be he, I asked myself again, of whose im-

[297]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

periousness and explosiveness I had heard so many
instances?

He reserved his sympathy for the weak and the wronged.
The domineering side of his character came out not
only in his encounters with crime, but also when he was
offended by pretence and vulgarity. A Manchester
solicitor, gold-chained, jewelled, and wearing a magnifi
cent fur coat, came into his chambers one day.

" What do you mean by coming here in a coat like that?
Take it off at once, sir, " Russell cried savagely. Every
body present was dismayed, but as soon as the coat
was removed he plunged into the case which the
solicitor had brought as if nothing unusual had hap
pened. When he was irritated he could use pretty
strong language.

Also at the Lucys' I have met Mr. H. G. Wells, a very
different person from what you would expect him to be
from a mere reading knowledge of "Kipps," "Tono
Bungay," "Mr. Polly," and "Ann Veronica, " a smallish,
demure, unobtrusive, low-voiced man, very particular
as to his clothes, almost feminine in his fastidiousness.
The open-eyed and eye-opening audacity of his novels
and the originality and daring of his social and political
theories could not possibly be surmised from what one
sees of him in ordinary intercourse. He gives the im
pression of being a butterfly rather than the vigorous
radical and intellectual force that he is, though you can
not fail to observe the humour of his mouth and eyes.
I admire Mr. Wells for both the trenchant simplicity of
his style, its ease and grace, its honesty, its unlaboured
and tranquil movement — "Strong without rage; with
out o'erflowing full" -and for the profundity of his
insight into human nature, and I predict that his works

[298]

SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE

As "Hamlet"

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

will long outlast those of most of his contemporaries
in fiction.

Lest we deceive ourselves in narrow pharisaism and
epicureanism as to the cleanliness of the world, he may
occasionally drag us through its mire, perhaps repelling
us by dipping his hand in it to prove its depth, but
oftener he leads us to inspiring hill-tops and pantascopic
views, where the air is pure and invigorating.

At the Lucys too you may sometimes find Sir Herbert
Beerbohm Tree and his accomplished and diverting wife,
Lady Tree, both of whom are celebrated for their wit.
Whenever you go to London one of the first things you are
likely to hear is a fresh epigram of hers or his. I have
had the pleasure of knowing them for twenty years or
more, and he is still something of a mystery to me through
the multiplicity of his activities, which he steadily pur
sues while apparently he is enveloped in a cloud of dreams.
"He has a way of appearing to be soaring in the clouds
while he is rooted to earth. Only a witticism, an inanity,
or a piece of chopped logic, is necessary to bring him
down. He picks it up, plays with it, turns it round and
about and upside down — and utters a drollery or
pungent criticism upon it in swift, neat epigram. He
is not farthest away when his eyes are dreaming — his
hearing is tense and keen. This makes for the baffling
thing in him. He never speaks except to say the il
luminating something - - he never babbles nothings.
His absent-mindedness is the peg for many tales,
as when he went to pay a call, he got to reading
his letters in the hansom, stepped out when the
cabby drew up at the door, rang the bell, still read
ing letters, and, on the servant opening the
door, said, "Come in! come in!" walked down the

[299]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

steps into the hansom and drove home again, still
reading letters."

That is a fair description of him. A John-a-Dreams
you think, as you see his eyes upturned while he rests
his elbow on the table or the arms of his chair. He is
more than a dual personality. The artistic temperament
is paramount in him, and never content with less than
the fullest measure of its aspirations, and yet he is the
proprietor and manager as well as the leading actor of
His Majesty's, which he has made the first theatre of
the Empire, and that no more by the lavish splendour
and accuracy of what it offers than by its intellectual and
aesthetic appeal.

Joseph Jefferson used to tell us at The Players how on
an imaginary visit to the gates of Heaven St. Peter did
not recognize him.

"Jefferson, Joe Jefferson, you know."

The saint shook his head until Jefferson added "Rip
Van Winkle."

"Ah!" The celestial custodian smiled a little. "I'll
let you in, but see here! if I do you've got to change that
part. We are getting a bit tired of it even up here. "

Tree cannot be excluded from Paradise on that score
— for want of novelty and variety. His variety is
infinite, his ambition boundless. However marked and
gratifying his success may be in one part he is no sooner
familiar in it than he is impatient to add another to his
amazingly versatile record, and from the classics he swings
to the modern, from Shakespeare and Sheridan to Stephen
Phillips, Ibsen, Oscar Wilde, and still more recent play
wrights. Nor does he ever fail to command respect, for
subtle intelligence and artistry ingrain all his imperso
nations. He is never less than interesting and often great.

[300]

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

His Hamlet is of all the most poetic and in that, as in
"The Balladmonger, " his own personality is visible, but
in Falstaff, in old Demetrius of "The Red Lamp,"
and especially in the character of the swollen, blatant
vulgarian of "Business is Business," every idiosyncrasy
of his own completely disappears. Indeed, I think that
the last is an incomparable example of his genius for
self-effacement and transfiguration.

Another thing to his credit is the magnanimity of his
attitude toward his fellow players which allows him to
engage them without thought of peril to his own pre
dominance. It is not uncommon for the star to take very
good care that those who support him shall not do so
too well. Tree's policy is generous, not only to the mem
bers of his company but through them to the public.
He divides honour with those who surround him and even
subordinates himself so that another part than his may
have all the value and prominence the author intended.
Too often jealousy disturbs or suspends the judgment of
the bright, particular star. He is afraid of his satellites,
and prefers them to be dim, not brilliant, not invaders
of his orbit, visible only as foils to his effulgence.
Tree, on the contrary, strives to surround himself with
actors who can take every advantage of their opportu
nities, and no spectator is more pleased than he is when
they justify his selection by running close to him in the
approval of the audience. I have often seen him in his
dressing-room, that laboratory of his miraculous trans
formations, at the end of the first nights, with a few friends
around him, and while they have been pouring congrat
ulation into his ears he has let the flattery pass in order
to praise his associates.

"How fine you were, Tree. You surpassed yourself."

[301]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

"Do you think so?" with a quizzical glance. "But

wasn't A splendid! And B ! When the King

ogles her, and she drops her eyes and courtesies! I
must tell her how good she was. "

He is reckless of cost in his productions, yet he frankly
declares that he does not want to produce any plays that
the public will not pay to see.

"It is far better to read Shakespeare in the study
than to see him presented in the archaic and echoic
methods so dear to epicures in mediocrity. Either
Shakespeare wrote for the stage or he did not. If for
the stage, then it should be the sole aim of the theatre
to create the illusion and the emotional intention of the
poet in the most compelling way that is granted to it.

" The merely archaic presentation of the play can be of
interest only to those who do not pay their shilling to
enter the theatre. The art that appeals only to a
coterie is on a lower plane than that which appeals to the
world. The theatre is not for those who fulfil their
souls in footnotes."

I could fill a chapter with further instances of his wit,
but one more example of it must suffice. He was playing
in Dublin to small audiences while another theatre was
full to overflowing, the attraction there being a bouncing
and voluptuous woman, who was more than generous
in the display of her person.

"What's the use?" sighed Tree, "How can Art ever
compete with Nature. "

Speaking of "Toby, M. P." I am reminded of the
Houses of Parliament, where for ten years or more I
spent a good deal of my time, an experience that de
pended for its pleasure, like so many things in life, on
the novelty of it. The proceedings themselves are often

[302]

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

of less interest than what one can see in the lobbies,
in the dining-room and on the terrace. There may be
uo vacancy for one in the galleries, but any member
can invite his friend to tea or dinner as often as he pleases,
and those who are in the cabinet and the ministry
have rooms of their own, up winding stairs and at the
end of narrow, musty corridors, where they can enter
tain in privacy and without restrictions. A delightful
feeling of mystery and exclusiveness envelops one in
being among the chosen of those little, privileged com
panies, who, I am not ashamed to say, I sometimes turned
to account in the editorial work I was doing.

"If you want to see anybody I'll send for him,"
William Woodall, who was then financial secretary to
the war office, used to say, and he would provide a
corner in which I could discuss with possible contributors
the matters I had in hand, while he engaged his other
guests, fellow members of the House and people of the
world of literature and art, who had dined with him earlier,
in a post-prandial way. It was easier for an editor to
get celebrities of the political world to write for him
then it is now. The misuse of their names and their
material by sensational and unscrupulous periodicals
has made them wary and suspicious of even the best.

But when Woodall sent his message the person sought,
usually and most obligingly came, and the business
was done off-hand, or if not quite off-hand, after a little
haggling. The commercial spirit holds hard and fast
in many places, and I never quarrel with it nor despise
it when through it a man merely seeks the most he can
get from sources amply qualified to provide it. I can
recall how surprised the late Robert C. Winthrop of Bos
ton was when he was told that Tennyson accepted pay

[3031

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

for his poems and Gladstone pay for Ins articles. The
unsophisticated old gentleman thought they sacrificed
their dignity and slighted the rights of humanity in doing
so, but his point of view was that of the rich amateur,
who in his abundance and leisure finds sufficient reward
on his occasional excursions into books and magazines,
through the accruing honour of what he flatters himself
is a service to mankind. Tennyson drove hard bargains
with his publishers, and I think it was I who awakened
Mr. Gladstone to a sense of the commercial value of his
articles. Mr. Gladstone had been satisfied with twenty
or thirty guineas as a fee as often as he wrote for the
English reviews. I was able to increase his honorarium
to several times that amount, and thereby established a
precedent to which henceforth he always adhered. After
his first transaction with me a London editor pressed
him for a contribution, and it came, but in the corner of
the manuscript was pencilled, like the figures on a lawyer's
brief, the inexorable price, one hundred guineas. The
editor was stunned, and his review, one of great merit, did
not long outlast the shock. I also had a curious expe
rience with Tennyson. He wrote some verses for us,
and as soon as he had received the very substantial sum
agreed on, he wrote that we had better publish them with
out delay, "as otherwise they might leak out." That
was an ingenious way of putting it, and I had some diffi
culty in convincing him that if they "leaked out" be
fore they appeared in our columns they would have very
little value for us.

I do not of course mean to say that Woodall, kind and
influential as he was, summoned the Gladstones, the
Motleys, and the Balfours of the House to his sanctum,
but lesser though not undistinguished men answered

[304]

SIR HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE

As "Falstaff"

"TOBY, M. P." AND HIS CIRCLE

his message by appearing, probably as a favour to him
rather than as a concession to me. They were not lack
ing in business instinct. I have to smile now as I recall
a dashing young fellow who was then at the beginning
of his career, unaided by wealth or power, and with
no other advantages than his talents. He was full of
energy, but gasping after his run up the stairs. He
listened to my proposal with rapid comprehension.
" All right! All right! I'll do it — but not for twenty
guineas. Make it thirty, and it's done." Since then
that business-like young man has been raised to the
peerage and has had the highest office in the gift of
the crown.

This reminds me of a story the president of the Adams
Express Company told me of Andrew Carnegie. Mr.
Carnegie had confided to him that his first savings were
invested in ten shares of that company's stock.

"And have you got those ten shares yet?" the pres
ident asked.

"No."

"Too bad! If you'd kept them you might have been
a rich man now. "

But I could not possibly say to Lord Curzon that if
he had devoted himself to literature rather than to
statesmanship he would be any better off than he is
to-day.

[805]

XXI
THE AUTHOR OF "LORNA DOONE"

THE next time you are in London go down to the
royal borough of Richmond, which is but
nine miles away, and having seen the famous
view from the Terrace, continue by the footpath down
the hill under the Star and Garter to the village of Peters
ham, where, within ten miles of the babble and bustle
of Charing Cross, you will find relics and some of the
atmosphere of the eighteenth and earlier centuries.

On one hand gently curves the placid, sylvan river;
on the other Petersham Park slopes down through dense,
glossy woods of oak, beech, elm, and chestnut, and clumps
of spruce, pine, and cedar of Lebanon, with thickets
of rhododendrons between, to hawthorn-hedged meadows,
pastures, and paddocks, which spread out from the
front and back of comfortable Georgian houses whose
weathered brick glows in every shade of red and purple.

Another footpath across a field, leads you to the ancient
church built of the same warm brick, mottled with ivy
and golden lichens — a mere toy in size, but much the
oldest edifice in the village: it was founded at the begin
ning of the fourteenth century on the site of a cell of the
Abbey of Chertsey. There you will be tempted to linger
in the little churchyard where you may hear the cuckoo
calling like spirit to spirit, and the moss-grown graves are
mantled by flowers and sheltered by sombre sentinels
of cypress and yew.

[306]

THE AUTHOR OF "LORN A DOONE"

You may linger, you will linger, until you fall under a
spell of peace and beauty which reconciles you to the
inevitable change the hillocked earth betokens. Roses
sprinkle the low wall over which you can see all the sur
rounding loveliness: the slant of the park, the quiet fields
and gardens, the silver surface of the stream, and the
crimson, brown, and white sails tacking upon it; roses
are everywhere, dropping their petals on the paths,
netting headstones and monuments, springing ^where
the hearts have been of those who lie below.

In all England you will not happen on anything jnore
characteristic of her rural charm than Petersham, which
has been preserved like a piece of old lace or lengths^ of
brocade bequeathed from grandmother to granddaughter
for untold generations.

Some celebrities are buried here: Captain Vancouver,
the discoverer of the island; Mary and Agnes Berry,
the friends of Pope and Horace Walpole, and the Countess
of Ailesbury — and one monument testifies to the hold
the place takes on others than natives :

(Earl of (Edgcumbe

ir0 fciirieU £>ere

tofco During a greater portion of f)i0 life c£o0e tr)i0
for a resilience, anU toping at Eicfmumto toe0ireto tfcat f>i0 mortal
remains 01>oulto not be borne to tf e distant tomb of l)is ancestors,
but be fcfpositefc in tins cijurci^arfc

i Mount Edgcumbe in Plymouth Sound has beauties
of its own; its green hills dip into a peaceful bay; laurel,
myrtle, orchids, magnolias, palmetto, and other tropical,
and semi-tropical things thrive in its soft air, but the lord
of it renounced it under the greater lure of this vale of
peace on the fringe of London. If you have any sentiment
you too will wish to live there when the time for retire-

[307]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

ment comes, and see in the signs of death among the
graves, wreathed in flowers as they are, sung to by sky
larks and thrushes, and in the dark by nightingales,
only the promise of repose.

Then, if you are good for another three miles, you can
go by footpath up the wide, smooth river bank, over
hung by ancient trees and hawthorn, and on the opposite
side, bordered by luxuriant gardens, with more and more
roses in bushes, arcades, and screens, looking as though
deluges of them must have fallen out of the blue sky
and the slow-moving, billowy clouds — you can go past
Ham House, which Charles the First's Earl of Lauder-
dale built, and which his descendant, the Earl of Dysart,
owns, to Twickenham Ferry and Teddington Lock with
out seeing in all your walk anything to mar the con
stant beauty, except here and there a tea house too
reckless of colour, or an ill-advised villa, whose mistakes
are nearly hidden by redeeming shrubbery and flowers.

That is a favourite walk of mine, and in the years that
are gone it ended in Teddington at the door of R. D.
Blackmore, the author of "Lorna Doone. "

Away from the river Teddington is naught now but
a raw, sprawling, untidy, hobbledehoy of a London
suburb, but when Blackmore chose it for a home it was
a country village, far from the noises and the smoke of
town, and except for its tea gardens, as rural as anything
between Hyde Park Corner and Bristol. He bought
his land for its seclusion, and with no thought of what
it would produce beyond fruits and vegetables. The
only noise, and that infrequent, was from the occasional
drags and char-a-bancs on their way with vocal cockney
holiday-makers to and from Hampton Court and
Bushey Park.

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THE AUTHOR OF "LORNA DOONE"

He did not reckon on the reach of the dragon's claws
or the size of its maw. The railway soon came and cut
off a corner of the land. In a few years more the adjacent
meadows were filled with the red and yellow shops and
houses of Suburbia, and glades where the nightingale
had sung were stripped and plotted to make room for
the ever-increasing examples of the unlovely mushroom
architecture, which pressed to his very gates.

He could have sold to advantage, but he had come to
stay, and stay he did till the end of his days, sending
his fruits to Covent Garden, and his novels to Fleet
Street or thereabout to make good the losses on the
fruit. He paid for his hobby, in part at least, with his
books, and in doing so did not feel that he was making
a sacrifice of them or of his dignity. It was exceptionally
fine fruit that filled the round wicker baskets of the
familiar pattern which, bearing his name in big black
letters, were trundled down to market along the level
highway, orchard-bound, between Teddington and Brent
ford to meet at Busch Corner, where the Isleworth Road
connects with the Hounslow Road, the similar produce of
another novelist, a friend of his, and a dear old friend of
mine, George Manville Fenn, who for a quarter of a
century or more divided himself between the loom of
fiction and a walled, old-world garden within the bounds
of the Duke of Northumberland's Syon Park.

If testimony is wanted I am willing to affirm that
better fruit than that of R. D. Blackmore and George
Manville Fenn was never sent to market: nor ever had
the brotherhood of gardeners more honest or more
enthusiastic followers than they. What pleasant mem
ories spring from the alleys and coverts of Fenn's garden,
with masses of glowing flowers, its lawn and the pavil-

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

ion-like mulberry trees and weeping ashes that sheltered
us in their cool and dappled shade at tea-time! The
two men were not unlike in their tastes and tempera
ments. Both were tall, genial, and mild; both charmed
by a sort of radiant simplicity.

There could not be a simpler or plainer house than
Blackmore's. I believe it is yet to be seen from the tops
of the trams that have "city fied" Teddington more than
the trains did — a house of dingy brick and slate without
a dormer, or a gable, or a single ornament to relieve the
austerity of its four wholly utilitarian walls, as improb
able a domicile as one could think of for a man of roman
tic and poetical imagination. Within it was no more
aesthetic than without, bare and cheerless, giving, how
ever, an impression of indifference to ornament or a con
tempt for it rather than of enforced frugality.

We talked in his study, and that was a bit of a room
with a writing-table, a chair or two, and a few books
against the walls, books in the plainest bindings — for use,
and, like all the rest of the furniture, not for display.
A pallet served as both bed and sofa, and a whimsical
impulse decided that before the various articles had been
assembled each had been asked: "What good are you?
Are you necessary, something that we can't possibly do
without? If you are a superfluity you shall not stay. If
you are a luxury, out you go. You have mistaken your
destination." Nevertheless everything was airy, sweet,
and spotless, and confirmed Richard Whiteing's dictum
that the absence of superfluity may be a negative beauty.

As for the man himself he was very like Horace
<Greeley in appearance. He must have been some
inches more than six feet in height in his youth, and he
towered above ordinary men even when his shoulders

[3101

THE AUTHOR OF "LORNA DOONE"

sagged, as they did in his closing years. His head was
in proportion to his stature, and the sparse locks remain
ing had a sort of debonair friskiness that hinted at a
vitality reduced a little, perhaps, but without a sign of
the cloudy dregs of exhaustion, though he was well along
in years. His beard, shaved away from his upper lip
and chin, festooned a rosy face from ear to ear, a face
of wholesome colour, pink and creamy as a girl's, and
lighted by humorous, twinkling eyes of mingled shrewd
ness and kindness. Rusticity appeared in his loosely-
fitting, ill-matched clothes, and an air of rusticity en
veloped him: not the material rusticity of the farmyard,
but that of the wind and the scents and the voices of
the open spaces; that of one who, living afield, had become
attuned to the quietude and solace of communion in
noiseless and unprofaned places. He seemed to exhale
the very essence of the moorlands and coombes he
loved and interpreted so well. Low-voiced, mild, be
nign, and courteous, attached to old ways and conditions
that are losing their hold, he was not passive or supine,
but could take his stand solidly and inmovably enough
when conduct or conversation antagonized his beliefs and
principles. He was one of the sincerest of men, and if
one had to sum him up in a word a fitter one than
"wholesome" could not be chosen. You felt him as a
piece of England and of England unmixed.

Is there ever a gardener, who, when you call on him,
allows you to stay in his study, his drawing-room or
elsewhere indoors for more than twenty minutes, if so
long as that? You see him glancing at the sky through
the windows: he may be wondering if it is too cold or
damp for you, but if it is not tempestuous and the rain
is not in drowning floods he is sure to say after a little

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

hesitation, "Wouldn't you like to come into the garden? "
and to show his pleasure the moment you consent.
And then he leads you forth, and strolls with you up and
down the paths, a more contented man, listening to you
and answering, and throwing in his own comments in
leisurely tones, while every now and then he steps from
your side to rake a hand among the strawberries, which
in Teddington and Twickenham are famous for their
size and flavour, or shakes his head at his peaches and
the fruits clinging to and slowly ripening against the
green and purple, moss-stained southern walls. He
is not inattentive to the subject of conversation, nor
does he miss the thread of it, but through it all he inter
jects irrelevant parentheses as to blight, the weather
and marauding birds, in which you, unless you are a gar
dener yourself, may only feign an interest. The expression
of his eyes claims sympathy, and you are ashamed of
yourself in becoming a renegade to him in letting your
feelings run with the predatory enemies as you see a
few of them caught alive by the neck in the meshes
of the nets and paying the penalty of their appetites,
like so many unfeathered and better endowed living
things.

So it was with Blackmore. He took you into his
garden, and picking up shears and pruning knife, used
them as you followed him and talked for choice more
of his fruits than of himself or of his books, about which
he was always very shy. Only one thing seemed sufficient
to ruffle his abiding serenity, and that was some mistaken
paragraph in a horticultural paper. Then he would
shake the offending sheet in the wind, and cry out
"Blockheads! Donkeys! This is the thickest-headed
of all the thick-headed papers. Why the fellow doesn't

[312]

THE AUTHOR OF "LORNA DOONE"

even know that the temperature of the soil has
more to do with the start of life than the temper
ature of the air!" And he would cap his objurga
tion with a tip of Latin, for which he had a scholar's
fondness.

With some reluctance on his part I got a few words in
edgewise about "Lorna Doone," but he had grown
tired of the predominance and preference given to that
book by his admirers, many of them distant strangers
in all parts of the world, from whom he was con
stantly hearing. Editors and publishers, I among
them, besought him for variations of it or exten
sions of it, and under pressure and unwillingly he
once revived the Doones in a brief narrative, which
it is probable he afterward regretted. Beyond that
he would not go.

I asked him about the origin of the story. "I could
hardly tell " - with some attempts at memory — "whence
and how I picked up the odds and ends, some of which
came from my grandfather (rector of Oare), circa 1790,
and later. I know not how early or how late, for he
never lived there, but rode across the moors to give them
a sermon every other Sunday. And when he became too
old for that my uncle used to do it for him." He de
rided the frequent attempts to identify the scenes his
imagination created with actual localities in the neigh
bourhood of Lynton.

I always thought there was a play in "Lorna Doone,"
and he authorized me, not without experience in such
work, to dramatize it. I got as far as a scenario and
consultations with actors and managers, but no farther.
There was a difficulty which could not be overcome, and
that was the size of John Ridd, the protagonist. Every-

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

thing hung on that — on colossal height, girth, and
muscle in the impersonator. Prize-fighters and exhibi
tion giants were thought of, but bulk and weight could
not suffice without some refinement, intelligence, and
histrionic capacity. The combination was unattainable :
padding might have served for circumference, as it does
in the part of Falstaff, but stilts would have been requi
site to lift the tallest actor to Ridd's splendid and
surpassing elevation. It need not be said that the actors
themselves did not see it in this way; Shakespeare had
no "rude mechanical" in his eye when he created Bottom
but a common specimen of his fellow players, who in
their own conceit can, as we all know, play any part
that is long enough and central enough, whether it be
the lion or Pyramus. One of them was confident he
could do John Ridd, and ready to stake money on it -
an effeminate little man with shrimpy figure, and a
violin voice, which would have necessitated a megaphone
in addition to the padding and the stilts. The play I
contemplated was abandoned, and though unauthorized
versions of the romance have been attempted they have
not succeeded.

Occasional letters passed between us — his always
written on the smallest and most lady-like of note-paper
in a cramped but not illegible hand, which at a glance
gave the impression of Chinese characters. They had
an antique precision and formality and were embellished
by pedantic bits of Latin, like his talk. Many words
were abbreviated in the old-fashioned way, which
economized the alphabet while it elaborated and mean
dered in the phrase. Then such words as "would,"
"should" and "which" were curtailed to "wd," "shd"
and " wh." I think he belonged to the eighteenth century

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THE AUTHOR OF "LORNA DOONE"

by his preferences and his habits. He was proud of the
port in the cellar: and loved God and honoured the
queen; he read the Times and he regarded change
and innovation as devices of the devil. Petersham
Church-yard is the place in which he should have been
buried.

[815]

XXII

MY ACQUAINTANCE
WITH MR. GLADSTONE

EARLY in the eighties, when he lived in Harley
Street, Mr. Gladstone often walked from his
house to Westminster by the way of Regent
Street and Pall Mall, and it was on one of these occa
sions — in the yellow dusk of a wintry afternoon —
that I saw him for the first time. Even the few in the
crowd who did not know him were arrested by the rare
distinction of his appearance, which suggested both
power and benevolence. Apparently in the prime of
life, though actually beyond it, and with a figure of
supple strength and more than common height — his
face pallid but luminous — he bore himself with that
dignity and grace which nobles and princes do not
always inherit and the leaders of men cannot always
acquire. There was in him "a combination and a form
indeed to give the world assurance of a man." Other
distinguished people might be mistaken for something
less than they are — Lord Rosebery for instance — but it
was impossible to see Mr. Gladstone, whether one knew
him or not, without recognizing in him a man both un
usual and paramount. Those among the passers who
did not know him gazed and wondered; the others
whispered his name, and many of them after passing him
once turned in their path and doubled on it for the sake
of passing him again.

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MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

Soon after this it was my privilege to become ac
quainted with him personally, and a frequent correspond
ence between us ensued, leading to occasional visits
to Ha warden, which I need not say made red-letter
days for me, and were looked forward to with no less
appreciation than the memory of them justified when
they were over.

Hawarden is not properly a castle, but a compara
tively modern castellated mansion of yellowish-gray
stone set in a formal garden, with loose gravel paths
and gorgeous flower beds that glow like banners.
A high stone wall separates the house and grounds
from the village, but in the opposite direction they
open upon a rolling and heavily timbered park and
distant views of the Welsh hills. The path is always
open to the public, but the garden and the approaches
to the house are fenced off, as are the ruins of an ancient
castle standing on a hill close by. That castle was
one of the chain of fortresses built by Edward I and
Edward II to overawe Wales, and nothing remains of
it but the crumbling, moss-grown keep, from the parapet
of which you can see the Dee crawling to the sea, and
the low peninsula of Cheshire, and the darkened skies
hanging over Liverpool.

When visitors came to Hawarden as guests of the
house (and such visitors came from all over the world),
the host would often take them up to the parapet,
and as he gazed meditatively toward the brown cloud
enveloping the bustling seaport which gave him birth,
the mind of the spectator was drawn sympathetically
down the long vista of years lying between the child
in Rodney Street and the veteran standing by, who
had so gallantly weathered the political storms of

[317]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

more than sixty years. We all remember Macaulay's
characterization of Gladstone, who at twenty-five had
become an under-secretary of state — "the hope of
the stern and unbending Tories." Never did a pre
diction so miscarry. "I was a Conservative in respect
to ecclesiastical questions, but not in all things," he
declared to me, "though I did not then understand the
value of liberty for its own sake as a principle of human
action and as a necessary condition of all political excel
lence." Before this he had created definitions of the
Liberal and Conservative parties — "Liberalism is trust
in the people, qualified by prudence; Conservatism is
mistrust of the people, qualified by fear."

His urbanity had an old-world quality of courtliness
without the chill of ceremoniousness, and the visitor was
quickly made to feel that he was an object of friendly
interest and consideration rather than the recipient of
honours and privileges, ready as he properly might be
to see himself only on that footing.

The life at Hawarden could not have been simpler
than it was in Mr. Gladstone's closing years. The
house is not one of the great ones — not a "show place"
in the sense that Chatsworth, Hatfield, and Eaton Hall
are, though it was so long the Mecca, of British Radicals,
who all through the summer thronged the park and
spouted Liberal doctrines as copiously as their kettles
spouted tea. "The absence of superfluity," Mr. Richard
Whiteing says, "is negative beauty," and no super
fluity was visible at Hawarden, except in the library,
which from time to time overflowed into the new hostel
for theological students, founded by Mr. Gladstone in
the village.

"As long as I kept my books down to twenty thou-

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MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

sand I could remember them all, but now" - he touched
with his foot a row of them that had been removed from
the library of the house to the hostel — "but now,
with thirty thousand and more, I find myself getting
duplicates."

All things — all persons — in the household were
governed by simplicity and precision — so many hours
were allowed for work, and so many for play. To the
end Mr. Gladstone lived by a time-table, and the days
were rare when he made any variation from it. Im
mediately after lunchen he retired to his library for about
an hour, not to work, read, or rest himself, but to humour
Mrs. Gladstone while she took her nap, which she could
not do when he was absent. The incident speaks for
itself, and I mention it for the light it throws on the
affection and mutual dependence visible at all times
between them.

He was nearing his eighty-eighth year at the time of
which I am writing, but even then it was his habit to
rise by eight and not retire till eleven or later. Tree-
chopping had been forbidden, and his recreations were
limited to walks and drives in the afternoon and back
gammon (of which he was very fond) after dinner. Here
I am using "recreation" in its conventional sense of
amusement. Mr. Gladstone often declared that he had
always been able to find recreation in its proper sense
by turning from one kind of work to another — -that
when wearied of politics he could refresh himself by litera
ture, and vice versa. He attributed his longevity and
health to this versatility, by which he could recuperate
his energies, not by suspending them, but by merely
diverting them. More remarkable than that, however,
was the gift which enabled him to shut out for the night,

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

at least, all cares of the day, even in the great political
crises when the fate of nations depended on his decision.
When the day's work was done — and it might be a
very long and anxious day — he never carried any rem
nants of it to bed with him, but drew about him an
impenetrable curtain, behind which repose prepared him
and fortified him for to-morrow. I believe the ability
to compel sleep whenever it was due or desired never
failed him.

He was extraordinarily methodical in his work and
correspondence, and looked after many details which
might well have been delegated to a private secretary.
Hundreds of letters from strangers were withheld from
him, but he kept matters which were of interest and
importance to him in his own hands. All the letters and
all the manuscripts — not a few — which I received
from him from 1887 to 1898 were holographic — not
excepting the post-cards, which he liked for their economy
of space, time, and material, using them with an edge of
black specially printed on the margin by his own order
when he was in mourning. He strongly objected to
typewriting on the ground that not only was it more
difficult for him to read than any fair hand, but also
because it interposed, as he claimed, a mechanical veil
between the sender and the receiver of a letter. His
amazing precision revealed itself even in matters that
another man in a similar position Vould have slighted.
The little that could be crowded on to the face of a post
card was often divided into sections "I.," "II.," "III.,"
and then subdivided by A, B, C, and so on.

I have a note from him before me in which he says :
"Your letter of Mayl2th has aroused in me a sense of guilt
and stirred me to the performance of my duty. My

[320]

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

excuse is not only in the heavy pressure of other calls;
it is also in this, that my eyes are steadily losing power,
and that typewriting (so kindly meant) tries them much
more than good manuscript."

I have another letter of his which covers four closely
written pages, and is divided like others into sections and
sub-sections by numerals and alphabetical distinctions.
In this, written soon after President Cleveland's Vene
zuelan message, he says: "In my view it was impossible
for us to admit that the United States had a locus standi
in the case; and, as I understand, with its usual per
spicacity, your government does not press this point if
the question be properly handled; i.e., referred to ar
bitration. On the other hand, if Lord Salisbury in
sisted on the acknowledgment of the Schomburg line as
a preliminary, he was wrong and gravely wrong. Unless
that line has been acknowledged by Venezuela, it is of
no authority whatever as against her. What claims
may arise in our favour out of silence, uses, prescription,
and the like, an arbitrator would consider."

It was through Mr. Gladstone that I was introduced
to Cardinal Manning, whom I sought as a contributor
to a discussion of Christianity, which Mr. Gladstone and
Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll were already carrying on in
the pages of the North American Review. The cardinal was
to review both of them, and sum up and adjudicate in the
controversy. I was invited to the gloomy palace at
Westminster to meet him, and as much to my surprise
as to my satisfaction, he appeared to like the idea as I
explained it to him and to be even eager to add his word
to what had already been said. I particularly wondered
how he would deal with the violent heresies of "the
colonel," and what he would have to say of his life-long

[321]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

friend as defender of the faith. His view of them was
what I desired.

A few days later I was again bidden to the palace and
the cardinal glided — was wafted, one might say — into
the bare, high-ceiled room, lined with the dusty por
traits of dead hierarchs, looking less like a man than a
spirit in his emaciation. His tread was noiseless, his
eyes glowed like stars under his smooth, white brow, and
his fingers were long, pointed, and as sensitive as a
woman's. Could this ever have been the youth at
Harrow who sported Hessian boots with tassels, and
was described as a "buck of the first water?" Ascetic
as his appearance was, reminding one of mediaeval saints
(and perhaps inquisitions), his manner had a human
warmth and friendly ease. He had with him a large
folio manuscript, written from beginning to end in his
own legible and beautiful hand, with scarcely an erasure
or an interlineation in it.

"There — there it is," he said, beaming as he handed
the manuscript to me. "I have given you something
better than what you asked for. I have not said a word
about Mr. Gladstone!"

I am afraid my countenance fell, for what I had been
after was to some extent the argumentum ad hominem —
something personal as well as controversial.

"And not a word about Mr. Ingersoll," he continued
with a triumphant air, looking for signs of gratification
which may have been dissembled in my face if they
did not exist.

"I have not referred to them, nor to what they have
said. On the contrary I have let the Church speak for
itself. Here it is," and he handed me a dogmatic
essay under the head of "The Church Its Own Witness,"

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

which, so far as he was concerned, left him entirely
aloof from the controversy. Great as was the disap
pointment, in one way his prudence compelled recognition,
smiling though sad.

Some time afterward Mr. Gladstone said to me: "I
wish I had not written that article on Mr. Ingersoll.
I feel as if I had had a tussle with a chimney-sweep.
I understand that he has been sent to gaol for sending
improper books through the mails."

I hastened to correct him, and to assure him of "the
colonel's" blameless moral character. He listened and
with a sweep of emphatic magnanimity which was amus
ing declared: "Then I shall never say another word
about it."

Much was whispered, and hardly less asserted, during
his closing years in reference to what was sometimes
called his craftiness and sometimes — by those who
were friendly — his sagacity. Not a Grand Old Man,
but a very shifty, beguiling old man, was the definition
of the antagonists who closed around him in captious
and jarring factions after the Home Rule schism. He
was fully conscious of his own political astuteness, and
chuckled as he spoke to me of the extraordinary vogue
which carried a chance description of himself as "an
old parlimentary hand" around the world.

A delegation of Irish Nationalists once went to Hawar-
den to ascertain his position in reference to their projects,
and after spending a delightful day there they found on
reaching Chester on their way back to London that
instead of getting him to define himself he had evaded
them at every point with a suavity which had quite
blinded them while they were in his presence to the
circumvention of their purpose.

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MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

But practised as he was in diplomacy, in argument,
and in debate — in all the tactics and strategies of
politics — it was not difficult to move him and surprise
him into flares of passion. He believed in righteous
indignation, and when he manifested it there was an
impaling fierceness in his eyes and an impetuosity of
speech that made a startling contrast to his customary
urbanity and self-control. The intensity of his feelings
and his convictions extended to many things, even
apparent trifles. "He will talk about a bit of old china
as if he were pleading before the judgment seat of God,"
a friend said of him, and in his endeavour to persuade
and convince he exerted much the same compelling charm
and solemnity of manner in relation to a fragment of
bric-a-brac as in the conversion of a theological or
political adversary.

He was capable of rather violent antipathies un
doubtedly. Mr. Tollemache reports how, when he sug
gested that Mr. Parnell was a pigmy compared with
Lord Palmerston, Mr. Gladstone replied sharply: "He
was nothing of the sort! He had statesman-like quali
ties, and I found him a wonderfully good man to do
business with, until I discovered him to be a consummate
liar."

Nor was Mr. Gladstone less explicit when on a certain
occasion I repeated something which Mr. Chamberlain had
said in reference to a matter of politics — a colleague who
had been one of the first to secede from him in the great
schism, which led to the formation of the Liberal Unionist
party. Mr. Chamberlain had been in Mr. Gladstone's
cabinet, and while there had been one of the most radical
and devoted of his coadjutors — he has been one of the
most conspicuous members of other cabinets since.

[324]

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

Frowning and with a sudden deepening and hardening
of the voice, Mr. Gladstone turned and said: "Does
he say that? What does it matter? Can there be ten
men left in England who believe anything he says?"

Those were days of disruption and almost incon
ceivable hate. Many of those who had been staunch
Gladstonians — Birmingham Radicals and North Coun
try non-conformists as well as moderate Whigs — found
themselves arrayed under Tory banners across the
way, and the Duke of Westminster with uncontrollable
impatience turned the portrait of his former leader
to the wall to begin with and later on turned it out of
his house. Probably political feeling never ran higher
or more rancorously in England than it did then,
and there was an attempt to ostracize Mr. Gladstone,
not only politically, but socially. Men and women of
rank and power refused to go to parties at which it was
understood he would be present, and could they have
had their way and put the clock back a few centu
ries he would have been marched into the palace yard
and with as much celerity as possible hanged or be
headed without compunction and without regard to the
constitution.

Undoubtedly when the provocation was adequate,
especially toward the end of his life, Mr. Gladstone
came to be a good hater, though his magnanimity with
foes was one of his most striking characteristics. When
one of his bitterest critics in parliament died, it was he
who rose to bear testimony to the excellence of the
departed, and this was done in the most touching way,
and with evident sincerity. The caustic scoffing of
Disraeli never goaded him into reprisals. In his later
campaigns, however, he sometimes lost his temper, as

[3251

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

when making a speech in Midlothian an inconsiderate
auditor "heckled" him, as they say there — that is,
interrupted him with needless questions intended to
confuse. He bore it patiently for a while and then sud
denly paused in his argument to swoop down on his
tormentor like an eagle on its quarry.

I remember another occasion, at a dinner party,
when, besides Mr. Gladstone, a certain bumptious editor
was present. "I received a note from you a few days
ago," said the great man pleasantly. "From me?
Not from me. I am sure you didn't! You may have
had one from my secretary." Mr. Gladstone, though
clearly hurt, nodded his head gently in acquiescence,
and as the dinner progressed, became, as was natural,
the "predominant partner" in the conversation. All
the guests turned to him and all listened, and to all of
them he spoke in turn — all except Mr. Editor, who
strove in vain to get a word in edgewise for the rest of
the evening. Mr. Gladstone would neither see him nor
hear him, and, except to himself, he was non-existent.

Another scene I recall when a Conservative member
of the House of Commons, with savage indelicacy, at
tributed some alleged inaccuracy of Mr. Gladstone's
to the infirmity of years. "I am unable to determine to
what exact degree I am suffering from the infirmities
of age," he replied, glowing with heat, "but I will ven
ture to say that, while sensible that the lapse of time is
undoubtedly extremely formidable, and affects me in
more than one particular, yet I hope for a little while,
at any rate, I may not be wholly unable to cope with
antagonists of the calibre of the right honourable gentle
man opposite."

Those were days, too, that gave many opportunities

[326]

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

to the editor whose pages — Tros Tyriusque mihi nullo
discrimine agetur — were open to debate. Foremost in
the revolt was the late Duke of Argyll, and the bitter
ness of his protest was in proportion to the love he had
hitherto borne the great leader of the united Liberal
party to which they had both belonged and whose
responsibilities they had shared. It was not difficult
to induce him to write on, the matter, for, as is well
known, he was not only a man of no less intense feelings
than Mr. Gladstone himself, but also a facile and in
dustrious writer.

Let me warn Americans of another thing to be kept in mind — wrote his
grace. They must not trust the accuracy of Mr. Gladstone's assertions about
the past history of Ireland. All his utterances have been at least one-sided
and partisan in character. Very often they have been in absolute defiance
of the facts. The same tone of inflated fable about Irish history colours
every speech he makes, and if it were possible to say that it represents even
an approximation to the truth it would leave us in bewilderment as to how
he never discovered all this till he was past seventy-five years of age, and
how he, even up to that age, denounced those Irishmen who held similar
language as the excuse for their violent and revolutionary remedies. It
is vain to go back to Irish history to establish any real connection between
the long miseries of the country and the English invasion or the later English
colonizations. The Celtic Church was as tribal as the Celtic clans. It
joined and stimulated all their barbarous intertribal wars, the monastic
bodies fought with each other, and slaughtered each other, and wasted
each other's lands continually. It is the grossest of all historical delusions
that the miseries of Ireland have been due to external causes. They were
due to the utter absence of civilizing institutions; and that again was due
to the fact that Ireland was never conquered as England was conquered.
No race superior in organization ever made itself complete master of the
country. In England we are now all proud of the "conquest." It was
a great step in our progress. The poorer Irish longed to be admitted to the
benefits of English law. But the Celtic chiefs and the half-Celticized
Norman lords preferred their own tribal usages, because these gave them
more complete power over the people.

I have written this currente calamo. But I wish my American friends to

[327]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

understand that it is on principles well understood among them, and which
they considered in their own constitution, that so many here are determined
to resist and oppose to the uttermost the anarchical attempt to disintegrate
the United Kingdom — just as they resisted the attempt to break up the
United Republic in the interests of slavery and secession.

No doubt many readers can recall Tenniel's cartoon
based on a popular picture of a little terrier, aroused
from his sleep by the mention of "rats," the terrier ap
pearing in the caricature with Mr. Gladstone's head
instead of its own, and awaking to challenge and alert
ness the moment "atrocities" are whispered. "Who
said rats" is the name of the original. "Who said
atrocities?" the name of the parody. No other portrait
of him is so successful hi giving that expression of brist
ling indignation and vehemence; the hawk-like pre
paredness to swoop; the electrification of muscle and
nerve, and the imminence of reprisal alarming, even be
fore it struck, which appeared when he was unexpectedly
stung by an unforeseen adversary.

Thus he looked when I showed him "proofs" of the
duke's article. Would he answer it? I confess that
the question was asked with little expectation of an
affirmative reply, but to my surprise he consented at
once and within a few days his rejoinder was in my
hands. A paragraph or two may be quoted to show the
temper of it.

Those who wish for arguments on the subject must look elsewhere [than
in the duke's article]. It is best to separate altogether this paper from the
personality of its eloquent and distinguished author, and regarding it in
the abstract as we regard a proposition -of Euclid, to take our measure of
it simply as an example of the highest heights and the longest lengths to
which assertion can be pushed apart from citation, from reference, from
authority, from that examination of either the facts or the literature of the

[328]

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

case, to which the writer does not condescend. Of this he becomes sensibly
aware toward the close of his paper and he informs the reader accordingly
that he has written it currente calamo. A truly singular announcement.
The currens calamus is an instrument well adapted for the journalist who
in the small hours of the night has to render for the morning papers, in a few
minutes, the pith or the froth, as the case may be, of the debate scarcely
ended, or the telegram just arrived, but surely is less appropriate for a states
man who dates his birth as a cabinet minister from forty years back, and
who has now been spending many of those years in leisure, and it is a most
equivocal compliment to the American nation, which has taken its stand
on the side of Ireland through its legislators, its governors, its very highest
organs, as well as its countless masses, to suppose it will execute its volte-
face at a moment's wavering in obedience to a currens calamus.

And it is a currens calamus indeed; lor the article affords no indication
that its author has ever reined in the gallop of his pen for a moment to
study any book or any speech or pamphlet about Ireland. There is one
wonderful exception: the duke has been reading, and has cited, Monta-
lembert's "Monks of the West," from which he learns that Ireland had its
golden age "some thirteen hundred years ago"; that even then the Celtic
Church had "incurable vices of constitution," and that there was no law
in the country except the English law "in the smaller area of the Pale"
— which Pale and which English law had no existence in Ireland until more
than six centuries afterward. Such is the working of the currens calamus
when the article accidentally stumbles into the domain of fact.

It should be remembered that at this time Mr. Glad
stone was still prime minister, and that it was an unprece
dented thing for a prime minister while in office to discuss
his own policy in a public print, more especially in a
foreign review. I am sorry to say his doing so exposed
him to much criticism from the press of both his oppo
nents and his partisans, but I have mentioned the incident
to show his impetuosity and his inability to restrain
his rage when he was sufficiently moved. Had it been
written by another person the duke's article would no
doubt have gone unnoticed, but coming from so old a
friend and colleague it had to be answered, and even the
traditions of his high position, circumspect and fas-

[329]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

tidious as his habit was in such matters, were not enough
to silence him under the extreme provocation. It is
pleasant also to remember that the friendship, lifelong
but for this interruption, between him and the duke was
soon afterward restored, and that the reconciliation was
the subject of another of Tenniel's wonderful cartoons.

As Mr. James Bryce has said, one of the strange con
trasts which Mr. Gladstone's character presented ^as
his excitability on small occasions and his perfect com
posure on great ones. He would sometimes, in a debate
which had arisen suddenly, say imprudent things owing
to the strength of his emotions, and give a dangerous
opening to his adversaries, while at another time when
the crisis was much more serious he would be perfectly
tranquil, and give no sign, either at the decisive moment
or afterward, that he had been holding his feelings in
the strictest control and straining all his powers to go
exactly as far as it was safe to go, and no farther.

His prejudices were undoubtedly strong and in some
instances even insuperable, but I find it hard to
believe what Dean Farrar, now dead, once said of him
to me. "He has always stood between me and prefer
ment. And do you know why? Simply because, meet
ing him once at dinner, I could not agree with him as to
some of his opinions of Homer."

Willing to talk about and listen to many subjects
with extraordinary inquisitiveness and patience, there
were others that it was not safe to mention to him, and
an example of this may be quoted here from Mr. Lionel
Tollemache's " Conversations " :

"If the righteous are to be severed from the wicked immediately after
death, what need will there be for a day of judgment?" Mr. Tollemache

[330]

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTON1

asked him. "Would it not be a strange anomaly that the dying thief and
Dives should be called upon at the last day to make their defence before
the Tribunal of God, if each of them, the former in Paradise and the latter
in torments, has already learnt by experience what the final sentence on
him is to be? Would not the condemned be entitled to say of such a pro
ceeding? ' 'Tis like a trial after execution.' "

"I really cannot answer such questions," Mr. Gladstone replied, with
unusual heat. "The Almighty never took me into His confidence as to
why there is to be a day of judgment."

"I felt that it was impossible to press the matter
further," says Mr. Tollemache, and thus in his "Bos-
wellizing" as he properly calls his report and as these
fragments of mine may be called, he records without
shirking or shrinking a very characteristic attitude of
Mr. Gladstone's. There were several subjects on which
it was wise to "not press the matter further."

Enough remained to impress any one admitted to
his companionship with the breadth and variety of his
interests, though his attitude of deference and patience
in seeking knowledge was often embarrassing to a visitor
who had every reason to feel that it was more becoming
and more profitable to listen than to talk. In the course
of a walk through the garden at Hawarden, or a drive
through the park, or a climb to the top of the gray, ivy-
mantled tower, the only fragment of the original castle
that remains — in the course of one afternoon — I have
heard him speak of such diverse subjects as the respon
sibilities of wealth, the indifference to which he regarded
as the greatest danger confronting the United States; of
Samuel Butler, whom he regarded as the best guide
through perplexities of thought and conduct in moral
life; of changes in political life in England, which
he thought was deteriorating; of changes in the
public schools such as Eton and Harrow, which for all

[3311

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

their imperfections he considered of incalculable advan
tage to the national character; of his old friend Tenny
son; of his idolized Homer, and of the extravagance of
American humour! He carried in his memory a varied
stock of examples of the latter, and laughed like a boy
over them as he repeated them, especially over the story
of the Bostonian who, when asked what he thought of
Shakespeare, said: "He was a great man. I don't
suppose there are more than ten men even in Boston
who could have written Shakespeare's works." And
over the boastful clerk who, when told by the employee
of another firm that its correspondence involved an
expenditure of five thousand dollars a year for ink,
replied: "That's nothing. Last year we stopped dot
ting our *i's,' and saved ten thousand dollars by that
alone."

Once singularly erect and majestic in bearing, he
became before the end but a shadow of his former self. His
shoulders could barely support the weight of his massive
head, and the whole figure had shrunk and grown tremu
lous. It was a very old man who greeted me in the hall
when, within a year of his death I again had the honour
of being invited to Hawarden — an old man in a loose
gray suit with a flower in the buttonhole, a "billycock"
hat, and one of the famous high collars cutting into a
grizzled fringe of beard. But so far as could be dis
covered, the deterioration was wholly of the body; no
diminution of force was visible in the eagerness with
which he attacked every subject that came up for con
versation, or in his vivacity, or in his memory, which
recalled even minor incidents of years before. The once
sonorous voice was huskier, the once flashing eye paler,
and his locomotion feebler, but otherwise he was un-

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

changed — as courtly as ever, as graciously solicitous for
his guests, as omnivorous for information, as universal in
his interests. But his life had become simpler and more
retired, and his activities curtailed. Sundry naps were
necessary to carry him through from eight in the morning
till eleven at night. Still he was "putting in" between
reading and writing six or seven hours of work a day, and
this without any amanuensis or secretarial assistance.

International copyright was another topic and of a
clause in the act he said: "What should it matter where a
book is printed? A book is made in its author's head."
Free trade was another. "England commands the sea
now," he said. "The United States could command it if
she were a free-trade country." The wastefulness of the
ever-increasing armaments of Europe was then spoken
of, and then the English cathedrals. "Our cathedrals
are the best inheritance we have from the Middle Ages.
There are a few houses in England that have true
antiquity, only a few, but the best possession England
has, is her cathedrals." The relations between Doctor
Dollinger and Cardinal Manning were touched upon
and then the American accent. "Many Americans do
not say American, but Amurcan" he said.

Even in those days he was a very lively companion at
the luncheon table, and Mrs. Gladstone did not escape
his banter, though it was touching to see the looks of
mutual adoration which passed between them. He was
usually far too serious to be epigrammatic, but his
criticism of Jane Austen (he read many novels) — "she
neither dives nor soars" -was an illustration of the
pointed brevity with which he sometimes expressed
himself. For all his cheerfulness it was possible to dis
cover some misgiving of the kind old men usually have

[333]

MANY CELEBRITIES AND A FEW OTHERS

as to the competence of those who succeed them in
power. His detestation of the most prominent politician
in England then was undisguised and unqualified —
I have already revealed how outspoken it was. He
mentioned Lord Salisbury with an expressive shrug,
though he had both admiration and affection for Mr.
Balfour, and there were others bound to him by old
associations and political ties of whom he spoke with
obvious toleration and indulgence as well-meaning but
dubious apprentices. He protested vehemently against
extravagance in national expenditure. "There is only
one thing for which I could give them an appropriation,"
he said, "and that would be an appropriation for the en
largement of Bedlam." He gurgled with laughter as he
said this and quickly added, "And I know what they
would say : 'And you are the first man we shall put in it . "
I urged him to write his autobiography, but the propo
sition had no attractions for him, backed though it was
by the assurance of uncommon pecuniary results. He
had resolved to limit his literary activity to the two
subjects which had a supreme interest for him — Olym
pian religion and Butler. But later on when he was in his
eighty-eighth year I succeeded in persuading him to give
the Youth9 s Companion in his recollections of Hallam —
the A. H. Hallam of "In Memoriam" — what at all events
was a fragment of autobiography, and that I believe was
the last thing (penned, as all his manuscripts were, in his
own hand from beginning to end, with scarcely an erasure
or an interlineation) he ever wrote for publication.

"Far back in the distance of my early life, and upon a surface not yet
ruffled by contention, there lies the memory of a friendship surpassing every
other that has ever been enjoyed by one greatly blessed both in the number
and in the excellence of his friends.

[334]

MY ACQUAINTANCE WITH MR. GLADSTONE

It is the simple truth that Arthur Henry Hallam was a spirit so exceptional
that everything with which he was brought into relation during his short
ened passage through this world came to be, through this contact, glorified
by a touch of the ideal. Among his contemporaries at Eton, that queen
of visible homes for the ideal schoolboy, he stood supreme among all his fel
lows; and the long life through which I have since wound my way, and which
has brought me into contact with so many men of rich endowments, leaves
him where he then stood, as to natural gifts, so far as my estimation is con
cerned.

Looking back seventy odd years lie recalled his school
days with that spiritualized personality in language
both pathetic and exalted, which, if no other evidence
existed, would illuminate his natural nobility and that
enthusiasm for perfection which animated him to the
end of his days.

* * * * *

* * *

How shall I apologize for these dissolving views, so
trivial and so insubstantial? I can imagine the people
of whom I have written offering in their own behalf a
similar disclaimer to that behind which Henry James
hedged himself from a biographer. "What is written
about me has nothing to do with me, my me," he said.
"It is only the other person's equivalent for that mystery,
whatever it may be. Thereby if you have found any
thing to say about our apparently blameless little time
together, it is your little affair exclusively." So of my
subjects; the responsibility is mine and not theirs.

THE END

[335]

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Many celebrities and A3
a few others.

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Full text of "Many celebrities and a few others; a bundle of reminiscences"

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